Throne Wars I: The Coin of Bhaal
by Oryx
Summary: After the Throne of Bhaal saga, the cavalier Onyx continues his life of adventure and romance, but a mysterious madman has plans of his own....


Throne Wars I: The Coin of Bhaal  
  
Prologue  
  
After destroying Melissan in the Abyss, Onyx ceded the Throne of Bhaal and journeyed with his ally and true love Aerie to the avariel nation of Faenya-Dail to finally marry her. But a mysterious madman has plans of his own...  
  
I. Waking  
  
Onyx awoke to the first rays of the morning sun. It rose so early up this high in the mountains and the clouds, among the avariel, he mused. He rose and squinted east, down upon the lands of Faerun. The cavalier's eyes traced along the curved horizon, eyes adjusting and taking in the beautiful panorama as if still dreaming. He heard a sigh and turned to see Aerie, yet more beautiful still to him, waking, her avariel eyes instantly focused in the beloved morning light and trained upon him. He returned to her and held her protectively, his mind racing back across their lives and his own life before there was a "their".   
Wielding a short sword with two hands outside the walls of Candlekeep, puritanically hunting kobolds even as a small child. Attempting to read of the endless arcane lore in the great library, completely befuddled. Playing with Imoen: racing, climbing, hide and seek, damsel and knight, rogue and guard. Thief and Paladin. Games no more, as his thoughts moved to the day strangers in the town began attacking him, the night he and Gorion escaped into the rain and the fatherly man was cut down. By Sarevok. His blood. Of his true father. Bhaal. He and Imoen would travel up and down the Sword Coast to rout Sarevok before discovering this, meeting friends and foiling the Iron Throne along the way. Harper friends of Gorion's, and friends fought alongside and rescued at the gnoll stronghold.   
Friends who would be captured along with him by the psychotic archmage Irenicus, some never to see the light of day again. Fond but sad memories of the comical Khalid and the comely Dyanheir. Their experience in Amn had been harder on all of them. Minsc, though reliable as ever, had retreated further into the unique places in his mind where only he and Boo could go. Jaheira had become only more bitter and aloof, lashing out at all of them and especially their new friend Aerie, whom Onyx would eventually fall in love with and forsake Jaheira for. Even Imoen began to lose her carefree innocence, scarred across her cheek and her heart, and forced to endure yet more weeks in the grip of Irenicus as they were whisked to Spellhold. And he, Onyx, unsure and confused by the implications of his lineage, frustrated in his quest to avenge fallen comrades and rescue Imoen, betrayed by, furious at, slaying, and then pitying and forgiving the good-humored yet hapless Yoshimo, pulled in all directions by his love for the timid yet loving Aerie, his loyalty to the forthright yet unforgiving Jaheira, the importance of keeping his ever-fracturing party together, and ultimately doing what had to be done. How carefree his party had been in the Sword Coast. It had been so much harder in Amn. Even Nalia's kidnapping, though quickly resolved, had weighed heavy on his heart after the many deaths, imprisonments, kidnappings, squabbles, and betrayals.   
And just when he'd gotten Imoen back and was closing in on Irenicus, having Bodhi vampirize his beloved Aerie and having to bring her back! It had almost - almost - been too much for even this cavalier's stamina. And then finally going to hell and back to kill Irenicus, only to have to world nearly torn apart by his other siblings, all warring to become the one who would inherit the throne of Bhaal, yet all deceived by the scheming Melissan. With Aerie pregnant and the world crumbling around them, they had destroyed her in the Abyss.   
Onyx had not taken the throne of Bhaal. He could not have given it up solely for Aerie - though he sensed she still believed that in her heart - but because he knew how much good he could still do on Faerun, as a powerful mortal man. The mot powerful paladin in Faerun. He could have done probably yet more good as a god - though it is not always so that a mortal need be less important in the great scheme of things - but he knew that he could accomplish the good of both a powerful man, and a god - if he could find another, pure of heart, to acquire the portfolio of Bhaal. Until it was thus, however, this was Onyx's gamble - a spinning coin - for the throne could still fall into the hands of evil.   
  
***  
  
Far away on the land below, Cyran stood at the front and center of his army, astride a fearsome black horse and surrounded by a mounted bodyguard of fallen paladins. Stretching for an intimidating distance behind and beside the evil kensai-mage stood fighters, battle mages, and priests of Cyric. Already dashing up stealthily through the tall grasses around them, silently outflanking the opposing Amnish army, were squads of thieves. With a simple hand gesture, Cyran signaled to his head mage, and his battlemages let rip Stoneskin, Mirror Image and various spell protections upon themselves and Haste and Strength upon the fighters, while the priests began to bless his soldiers and chant. Cyran saw the opposing mages making similar preparations, yet only smiled. He had already strategically dealt with the opposing mages. As soon as the Amnish protections went up, thief-mages sprung up around them from the grass and began breaching and dispelling their enchantments and protections, and the other thieves appearing from nowhere and began backstabbing their way through the Amnish back lines.   
At Cyran's signal, his archers began firing an arcing cloud of arrows while his mages hurled fireballs, lightning bolts, and ice storms from their fingertips. As the air crackled with magical energy surging towards his foes, Cyran's engineers began firing catapult stones and scorpion bolts toward them as well. The Amnish mages, frail and mostly bereft of magical protections, began dropping and the soldiers, their enhancements dispelled, took casualties and they started charging with mundane speed towards Cyran's army. His own fighters, enchanted and unharmed, blitzed them and cut them to pieces while his priests harmed and held them. The Amnish clerics who had survived the missiles and invocation magics began holding and bludgeoning some of his own warriors, but the mundane and magic missiles shooting forward around Cyran disrupted them and injured them as his intact fighters cut them down. Now outnumbered and disorganized, the Amnish fighters found themselves outnumbered several-to-one in melee combat or fell to arrows in their backs as they tried to flee. The few remaining mages, unable to blast more than a few of Cyran's nimble thieves and strong warriors, were soon slashed down.   
Cyran and his bodyguards charged into the middle of the field, smashing their lances through straggling soldiers and priests as they rode towards the opposing general and his retinue of paladins. The noble warriors began charging them, lances forward. Cyran's thieves attempted to fire arrows at them or hack at their horses as they rode past, but only the rogues themselves were felled. As the holy and unholy warriors engaged each other, lance and armor struck and many were thrown from their mounts. Those remaining on horse, including Cyran and the general, turned to ride into the felled knights, who drew their two-handed swords and cleaved at enemy man and horse. Cyran drew the katanas Madness and Lies from their shoulder sheaths and, vaulting off his horse as spheres of protective energy encircled him, landed along the melee a cyclone of blades and invocations. Paladins became evil and insane as the katanas sliced through their armor and horrific utterances sliced through their minds. The general was run through and decapitated by the blades of his own men, who would now ride with Cyran as fallen paladins to replace those they had just killed. As the last Amnish fell, the Cyricist priests, uttering evil incantations, strolled across the field past the dead and they rose, born again into slavery under the Army of Cyran.  
  
***  
  
After they had held each other in silence for a time, Onyx's thoughts returned to the present as Aerie spoke.   
"I sense your feelings," she said. "The same feelings that plagued you as we struggled to rescue your sister and keep our party - and our love - together."   
Onyx mused at the uncanny ability of women of all races to carry on such one-sided conversations. Among the powerful mind-reading spellcasters, it was only more so.   
"I knew you would prevail from the moment I met you - even though I wore the illusion of an ogre at the time!" she cooed.   
I have not yet prevailed, he thought. I have become powerful, but the portfolio remains unclaimed. A coin is spinning through the air, as mine once did. Mine landed on its edge. How this one lands can be influenced. I shall will it to show the face of good when it lands. But I sense other wills at work. Wills that have surged in power just now. Wills that would have it land on the side of evil.   
"My love, you have destroyed thousands of monsters and evildoers and become the greatest paladin in Faerun. I know of the undecided fight you have spoken of and which you think of now. Trouble yourself not, my love. Though it is a matter of cosmic proportions, and you may have the power to decide its outcome, as I believe you do, it will not be decided soon."   
But forces are in motion, Onyx thought. I have sensed it just now. Somewhere, far below these clouds, on the land below. Perhaps on one of the plains which I now look down upon with my own eyes.   
"These things gather slowly, my love. Not soon. Not today. But today is our wedding, my love. I cannot tell you how happy I am, though I know you feel it, just as I feel your happiness. Your heart wants, just for now, to set aside this heavy burden. Enjoy yourself in the coming days among my people. Even up here, you have not been content to relax and set aside your quests."   
But if I hadn't led an avariel division against those cloud giants when I did, Onyx thought, civilian elves could have lost their lives. Six days ago now, Onyx's blissful stay among Aerie's people had been interrupted when he detected an evil presence near the avariel city of Paradise. He had gone to the paladins at the Order of Righteous Light , and with their backing the ranger lodge had sent scouts at Onyx's directions and they had indeed found a large band of cloud giants, led by a powerful shaman, still far away from the city but moving quickly through the mountains. Decked out in his charisma-enhancing sword, helmet and cloak, he had had to coax the queen of the winged elves - a normally pacifistic race who tend to be slow to anticipate a threat - to send a force to confront them before they could attack the general population.   
Flown in the grasp of a summoned deva, he led a division of avariel warriors, mages, and priests to the cloud giants. Attacking their camp at the first light of dawn, they had overcome and slaughtered the giants with light casualties. Hacking and bashing his way through the giant warriors with the Flail of Ages and the Axe of the Unyielding and the crystalline swords of the avariel, he and a squad of fighter-mages quickly penetrated to the center of the giants' camp, where Onyx slaughtered mages and shamans with the magic-dispelling Carsomyr as the fighter-mages breached and incinerated them and hacked them to bits. With a fearsome whirlwind of Carsomyr blade, Onyx had beheaded the leading shaman and the remaining giants quickly fell to scattering and Onyx commanded the avariel soldiers to hunt down every last one.   
They had returned to Paradise with wounds already healed by their clerics and Onyx became quite popular with the queen and city in general, and particular within the Order of Righteous Light, despite his wingless and, compared the the light flying elves, almost ogrish stature. Some, however, exploited his controversial reputation on the ground and whispered that this paladin - who brought so much death and destruction wherever he went - was in fact the source of the monsters to begin with.   
"Your initiative was invaluable, my dear, but you must leave time for a life of your own - our life - and the life within me," Aerie continued, reading his face and thoughts.   
Barring a sudden aerial invasion of Paradise by harpies or griffins, I suppose I can, Onyx thought. If those conniving court members leave me alone. Will some creatures never understand that I may herald carnage - but to evildoers, who would herald it themselves to the innocent? Why can some not make that distinction? His mind raced back to bitter arguments with Jaheira and her obsession with balance. Though she had never wavered in loyalty to their quests, this difference had driven a wedge between them. A wedge which Aerie filled, becoming a recipient of Jaheira's venom. Onyx sensed Aerie's sudden flash of unease and anger - thinking of Jaheira never failed to do that - and quickly tried to occupy his mind with martial tactics and his very nice weapons collection.   
"There was nothing special about Jaheira in that respect," said Aerie, now uneasy. "Many, such as some here - the thoughts of whom led your mind to her - think such things."   
And some, including Jaheira, would even contend that the portfolio of Bhaal inherently belonged to an evil or neutral god. Having a good god of murder would upset their precious balance. Onyx's nose wrinkled at Jaheira's stupid balance. He smirked as he remembered Keldorn and Anomen at the Radiant Heart suggesting they refer to "neutral" as "half-evil".   
"They may be wrong, my love," Aerie continued, now trying to get her lover's mind off the throne as well as Jaheira, "but the throne was in Bhaal's evil hands before, and Jergal's before him, and so you are fighting an aggressive battle to gain ground. Not a defensive one to keep it. That at least should comfort you. Only progress can be made. But it can wait just a little. Let me comfort you for the time to come. Let us face the day and prepare for our wedding."   
As he gently lifted Aerie out of bed carried her out of the room, he took a last glance over his shoulder and the land surface far below. He could feel it out there, somewhere, charging across a field or forest towards its objective. Towards its prey. Its adversary. Towards the spinning coin.   
  
II. Taking Sides  
  
He came over the horizon one day, walking out of the great desert, marching steadily and tirelessly across the great barren expanse that was rarely tread, which led to Kara-Tur far to the east. It was not known from whence he came or why. Minstrels would try in vain to place him among the characters of their extensive lore. No known political exile, escaped criminal, traveling vagabond, or wandering warrior of days past seemed to fit him well enough. His improbable martial arts prowess surely could not have been the product of a mundane and trifling earlier life, nor was it satisfactory to suppose that, becoming what he would, he could have never before been of consequence or at least meant to be. His abilities were too great, too honed. Perhaps he was still seeking his intended objective. Or perhaps he was not meant for a specific purpose, but rather as a weapon to serve someone, something, some credo or some cause, as the chance arose.   
First appearing in the deserts east of Amn, he walked always quickly and straight as an arrow towards his objectives. He spoke little, only to inquire as to locations, names, and news. He would give his name only as Kan and volunteered no other information. He would walk straight into crowded taverns, towards the table of some evildoer and, without a word, draw his katanas or merely thrust out a quivering palm and slay the villain, cleanly, quickly, and without a word. He would then leave. Guards weren't sure what to make of it, whether they should be allowing it, but it certainly made their jobs easy, and they weren't about to get in his way.   
Bards, struggling for news in the remote desert settlements, quickly spun quite a tale of Kan. Always taking the quickest path to the nearest evil, they would say, he would draw Truth and Clarity and, glowing white and gold, they would ricochet arrows, deflect blows, and seek the hearts and necks of enemies, if the ripples of force he sent through the air with his fists and feet did not crush and slice them into pieces first. They said he could even slice through armor and flesh with his bare hands and feet. The only thing the embattled gangster bosses of the area could find to save their own skins was to put as many evildoers as possible in Kan's way to occupy him and slow him down - slightly - and run in the opposite direction as he sliced and kicked his way towards them. Eventually, rid of evil in the desert towns, he continued walking west, towards Amn.   
  
***  
  
Deep within the labyrinthine caverns of the lone mountain Ith, surrounded by his captains, bodyguards, and chaotic festivities, Cyran slouched in his bone throne. Dressed in solid black, the kensai-mage wore a suit of trolls' hide which lent him their regenerative constitution, a Cape of Leaping which nearly allowed him to fly, solid obsidian bracers that had been specially crafted for him, and Boots of Speed. His wild blonde hair spilled over a headband bearing a purple gem that extended his ability to see and dominate the thoughts of those around him. He wore onyx rings and a reptilian belt which enhanced his self-serving charisma, dexterity and strength. And he wore a jade necklace which was an endless spell trap, absorbing incoming magic and feeding it to his mind. His left hand deftly spun knucklebones around its fingers while his right held a human skull, which he was raving at madly as his troops devoured food while watching enslaved dancers and musicians perform a lively recreation of the day's battle.   
"Yes outsmart them today by leagues did we today," Cyran muttered, "foolish Amnish generals almost take pleasure out of victory yes almost all of Amn will be destroyed or enslaved soon yes march to Athkatla soon we can yes only one more stronghold in way yes indeed many to be killed in Athkatla" The bards-in-bondage acted out heroic Cyran soldiers and clumsy Amnish, drawing cheers and laughter from the easily entertained troops. "the lies are spread throughout Amn many rally to our cause yes join us for fortune and freedom they think yes," Cyran cackled, staring intently at the black sun stained into the skull's forehead. "the priests of lies draw them with promise of liberation yes Amn the council of six who are they now what kind of secret is that secret because corrupt now who wants that don't like Amn soldiers at your bar brawl join us yes try to steal get caught no like join us yes lathandar helm talos priests not like your god say you heretic join us yes want to use magic in the street fight for us use your sword or dagger or spells for us yes use them do anything."   
A frightened, shaking slave girl served Cyran a goblet of wine, and without looking up, he reached for its handle but grabbed her neck instead "yes join us we say lies lies lies freedom is slavery yes" the girl collapsed as her neck broke in Cyran's grasp and still staring at the skull he tried again and caught the goblet this time "soon we will rule Amn all dead or slaves or believes the lies yes then i have enough kills yes i will have enough kills." Cyran's head wizard, without daring to interrupt him, approached the fallen slave alongside a Cyric priest. This necromancer, himself raised by Cyran's priests once before, was Onyx's old foe Xzar. After laborious research at Cyran's impatient direction, he had perfected a process of raising the dead in such a way that they returned to life in body, but psychotically reversed, whatever goals they had in life now twisted to those of Cyran. The Cyric priest raised the slave and Xzar began frying her mind with horrible thoughts emanating from his fingertips. As she stood again and shook out her neck, one of Xzar's bodyguards unshackled her. She politely took Cyran's finished goblet and left, no longer shaking with fright and now going about her business with a new resolve.   
  
***  
  
"The solution is simple. Allow myself and my former adventuring companions to head Amn's next battle. I hate to say it, but our generals are lazy buffoons." Nalia was speaking to the other five members of the Council of Six, who were squabbling and blaming each other for the latest defeat at Cyran's hands.   
"Nonsense! They are esteemed paladins all! How dare you question their integrity!?" lashed out one of them.   
"I did not question, I asserted, and not their lack of integrity, but of competence," Nalia sighed.   
A third member cut in, "Your adventures may have been the favorite of every bard in the city, but even if we could attribute it to your abilities - not the Bhaalspawn's - hacking your way as a small adventuring party is very different from coordinating a large battle, and you have no experience or training in such matters."   
Nalia responded, still calmly, "aside from the fact that I am nearing Elminster in power and could handle Cyran's battlemages alone, I do know how to coordinate others, and my companions Onyx and Minsc have both proven themselves in leading victorious skirmishes since our adventuring."   
A fourth council member, Eroanne, the only one Nalia had ever known to be reasonable, spoke up. "Our avariel ambassdor has informed me that Onyx lead the winged elves to victory against a horde of cloud giants only a week ago, coordinating a full force of warriors and spellcasters."   
"Giants are stupid, these Cyricists are not," spoke a fifth.   
"Cloud giants, for your information, are much more intelligent than any of us save Nalia," informed Eroanne.   
The fifth retorted, "Your nerve! Perhaps they have some intelligence - for giants - but these Cyricists are a different matter. Why, they use thieves en masse in battle, and they have been poisoning our population with propaganda and heresy and drawing many to their cause! We have that issue to deal with as well."   
"Then let us," said Nalia, "I for one think we could dissuade the weight of the rumors by revealing our identities, and as you know I believe we should do that anyway."   
"But," hissed the sixth, a bearded figure with a hood low over his face, "they like it this way! They believe it precludes us from corruption.....not that any of us would be corrupt that way, mind you."   
"Some of are as it stands," spoke Eroanne, "and I think we all know who." Nervous and angry looks bounced around the table and Nalia sensed much. "It is precisely the secrecy that makes it so easy, " she continued her thoughts, "moreover, the anonymity gives some of us the idea they have a license to do whatever they please without consequence."   
"But do you really think the public would approve of that controversial Bhaalspawn commanding our forces? Do you want controversy?" asked the third rhetorically. "It is precisely the secrecy that makes...unpopular.....decision like that possible."   
"Unpopular? That couldn't be further from the truth. I think the public would very much approve of a general Onyx," offered Eroanne, suppressing a giggle. "He is the rising star of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart, as well as a warrior responsible alongside Nalia and the others for protecting Amn and our elven neighbors from various cults, monsters, vampires, criminals, wizards, and the like. He has a very heroic reputation. And he is sooo charismatic."   
"Many blame him bring those troubles here in the first place!" protested the fifth. "Can we, much less the public, trust a man like that?"   
"I think the public would trust him and Nalia more than it trusts us! Can you blame them? I'd love to see the four of you put your own lives in each other's hands." Haughty, cynical glances shot around the table. "Remember that if the Cyricists succeed, your own skins will share of the fate of our population's."   
"Well, perhaps it's worth a try," admitted the third, "we're not winning any battles we way we're currently doing things."   
"You have a point," admitted the second.   
"Very well," hissed the sixth, seeing he was now outnumbered, "but only under the condition that the Council retains cred-,er, responsibility and authority, for all our forces. Do not disappoint us, Nalia."   
"It's settled then", said Nalia, "and just in time. According to our intelligence, the next battlefield will be one I know well - de'Arnise Keep."  
  
***  
  
At his own wedding, Onyx tried to focus on his immediate surroundings. When that meant the beautiful Aerie, he usually found this easy. Troubled, he tried to divine the forces at work. Someone or something was seeking the throne, but he did not know who or what. Could it be a powerful new cloud giant? Or one of their gods? There had been other movements their kind recently. The most intelligent of the giant races and ever scheming, such a move was well within their abilities of they had a leader or deity powerful enough to seize the throne. Or those slaving raiders - weren't they Cyricists? - that had been clashing with patrols outside the tows of eastern Amn?   
Onyx, and all in Paradise, did not yet know they had mobilized into an organized force that had annihilated one of Amn's entire armies.   
Cyric had his eyes on the portfolio of Bhaal, Onyx knew. He remembered confronting the Prince of Lies in his pocket dimension once. The Insane God had been more that a little annoyed at the prospect of him taking Bhaal's place, and no doubt he was devising the means to seize it for himself. Of that there was little doubt. The only question was how. He could sense evil around him and on the land below, but not amongst the deities or across the planes. How he could use a visit from Solar, who had guided him through his bewildering race to the throne. Some news from the pantheon of gods would be most useful right now. Or even some news from down below, he realized. He had not heard anything since he had come with Aerie to visit her people. Yet in that time, he had sensed movements in the evil below. As he had become a more and more powerful paladin, his evil detection abilities had grown considerably, but he found that up among the clouds, though further from everything, he could yet sense it better. Whenever he looked down over Faerun now, it was like a giant game board below. But he did not yet know who the pieces were. He needed to find his enemy. And his allies.   
Onyx returned to the present, to the wedding. In addition to Aerie's extended family and their friends, much of the royalty and nobility of Paradise were in attendance, as were most of the Order of Righteous Light. The avariel of course were of course quite familiar with Onyx and party's adventures, particularly preventing the destruction of their fellow elves in Suldanesellar. Every bard in Paradise had been spinning tales their exploits, and of Aerie and Onyx and the love that blossomed between them during their odyssey. Every avariel had heard of Aerie's torment in and rescue from the circus, her journey to vampirism and back, and now of her return with Onyx to Paradise.   
The great plaza of Paradise was packed with citizens for several blocks in every direction. Onyx stood in the middle of the plaza amidst a retainer of the Order's finest paladins. He was dressed in a typical groom's outfit for avariel nobility. Typical save that the design had had to be modified for him, an exceptionally tall and strong human. Smaller and lighter than even most elves, the avariel had little muscle mass and thin bones, but they made up for it with grace and skill.   
Trumpets blared, and a court announcement gave a needless introduction as Aerie appeared, surrounded by a retinue of her sisters and cousins. Onyx found it suddenly easier to focus as he looked upon his bride. In spite of her nonexistent wings, her dress fit her perfectly, and she looked more beautiful than ever in an extravagant avariel bridal gown. As they met in the center of the plaza, were married by the high priest of Paradise, and kissed, Onyx found one moment of unabridged happiness and peace.  
  
III. Gathering  
  
In the desert, Kan sat upon a prayer mat, meditating. In his mind, he was standing on an endless plain, a blur of fists and feet. Perfect in every calculation and technique. Now his thoughts moved to the land of the continent around him. He could sense the evil beings across the land, their locations and numbers. He felt a large presence within a lone mountain far away, and another up on top of a mountain range, the tallest in Faerun. This cloud of evil was moving. Towards a cloud of good high in the mountains. Kan sprang up from his mat, grabbed, rolled, and packed it away all in midair, and then his feet hit the ground again and began carrying him towards the mountains.   
  
***  
  
Valygar stealthily crept down a hall within Mount Ith. He had discovered much and now needed to escape, lest the information die with him within these cursed halls. He had to get the information back to Nalia in Athkatla.   
Valygar had once accompanied Onyx and the others through his ancestor's plane-hopping sphere while they had been working to soil Isaea Roenal's name and rescue Nalia from his clutches. He had also braved Bodhi's lair with the party to retrieve the vampiric Aerie. Sharing a mutual distaste for Athkatla nobility, he and Nalia had formed a bond during his short stints in Onyx's company. Following her appointment to the Council of Six, she had cleared his name in Athkatla and recruited the stalker to serve as her spy.   
He had now acquired intelligence that Cyran was planning his next mass attack on de'Arnise Keep, and Nalia had been grateful for the news. He had returned to discover the details of their planned attack - the attack was now only a week away - and had discovered that and much, much more. Keeping to the shadows and eavesdropping on the ramblings of Cyran and Xzar, as well as peeking at the maps and charts in their strategy chambers, he had not only discovered their exact attack plan, but another arm of their fiendish machinations as well. He had overheard Xzar ranting about how he had scrambled the mind of the cloud giant king Klaongar and been telepathically controlling him, ordering him to attack the avariel. Valygar had heard of the cloud giants' recent failed attempt. And now he had to get the information to Nalia who could get it to Onyx and the avariel. Another attack was coming, a far larger siege on Paradise. Timed to coordinate with Cyran's attack on de'Arnise Keep.   
  
***  
  
"Friends, thank you for meeting me tonight in this urgent matter," Nalia addressed her former adventuring companions. "As you know, I have wanted us to coordinate the next Amnish effort against the Cyricist army, and have finally convinced the buffoonish council in the matter. Furthermore, Valygar recently informed me that the Cyricists are in fact planning to attack de'Arnise Keep in six days. Minsc, you and Valygar - he should return again soon - will coordinate our rangers, and Imoen and I our mages. Keldorn, you will command our forward paladins and fighter-mages, and Anomen, you our clerics. Mazzy should be returning to Athkatla soon. I have spoken with her before in this matter, and she will marshal our fighters. Jaheira, I trust we finally have the support of the druids of the grove?"   
"The Cyricists have become too great a blight and Grand Druid Cernd has deemed they threaten the balance. We will join you," Jaheira proclaimed self-righteously. The druids had until Amn's recent defeat been unwilling to take sides against the Cyricist raiders, who had until then been seen as a minor evil on the fringes on Amn. Cyran had taken great care to hide his army's growing strength before that battle, knowing it would slow opposition such as the druids. Jaheira, no longer a Harper, had visited the grove, now headed by Cernd, many times since departing from Onyx's company. She had welcomed the time alone with her thoughts on the road between there and Athkatla, and had a philosophy now much closer to the druids' than to the Harpers'. She and Onyx had not parted on good terms.   
He had become increasingly self-righteous and puritanical as he slew thousands of evil foes across Amn, Jaheira thought to herself. Ignoring me, he had become increasingly absorbed with Aerie before and after their victory over Melissan, to the point of neglecting his friendships with the other party members. Especially the tenuous one with me. I blame Aerie, who constantly took great pains to turn his attention away from me. I could sense the little avariel witch's scorn of me under that innocent, blandly pleasant visage. And Onyx, deeply absorbed with her after completing their ordeal, never seemed to notice the wingless runt's scheme. How that paladin could be so adept at detecting evil but so clueless at detecting her games, I will never understand. Aerie and I could not help but sense each other's confrontational thoughts when around each other. Why the former circus freak had to be so overprotective, I don't know. I wasn't trying to steal Onyx from her, I just wanted him to acknowledge his other friends who had been through so much with him.   
Imoen had shared Jaheira's exasperation and Onyx's unbalanced attention and affection. Jaheira sensed the mage's thoughts now and Imoen responded in kind.   
And I'm his own sister, Imoen thought. We never really got the chance to talk about, y'know, being brother and sis and all, since we were running and fighting so hard. Seemed like we never stopped to camp, and when we did it was all Aerie, Aerie, Aerie. Always bothering him with this whine or that concern. Oh Onyx, I'm so afraid, oh Onyx, I'm hurt, oh Onyx, do you think I'm ugly, oh Onyx, I'm pregnant. Sheesh. Rarely space for concern for li'l ol' me, who spent so much time with that psycho Irenicus! Boy, I was pretty frazzled after that. I'm okay now, y'know, but I'll never again be that carefree girl strolling with you and Onyx up and down the Sword Coast.   
Imoen's finger traced over the scar that ran down her face between her forehead and cheek. She showed Jaheira thoughts from their youth. Standing in tall flowers, waving as strong coastal winds blew around her, fiddling with a gadget and watching a young Onyx trying to graduate from a short sword to a long and hack at a hapless tree. Standing beside him with a short bow and taking pot shots at that same tree while he hurled axes she'd stolen from a barn. Sitting on a hillock they liked to go and watching the sun set over the Sea of Swords, talking or just sitting in silence. Y'know, I think we sorta knew we were brother and sister all along. In our bones. We sure always acted like it. And in our conscious minds, after finding out about Onyx's heritage and realizing I had come to Candlekeep in much the same way at the same time. I think Onyx began to realize it too. He told me so, on one of the rare occasions we did get the chance to talk after ya guys rescued me. I just got back from Candlekeep again, y'know. Read through near the whole library. I found Gorion's hidden journal, and I think I found something out. We also have the same mother. We're twins.   
Their thoughts faded as Valygar burst into the room, panting heavily and nearly collapsing. Minsc rushed over to hold up his fellow ranger, and Nalia began invoking the sweat off his face. "Cyran - wizard Xzar - controls could giants," he panted. The party members gasped at the mention of that dead necromancer's name.   
"Catch your breath, swift stalker," Nalia offered, conjuring a glass of water. He gulped in down in one second and continued, regaining his composure.   
"I have the details and tactics of the assault on de'Arnise Keep, six days hence," Valygar informed them. "And the cloud giants, through their king Klaongar, are under the direct influence of the dark lord Cyran. The resurrected Xzar is telepathically controlling the king and they will move against the avariel on the same day as the Cyricists attack us at the keep. That other skirmish Onyx put down was only a small war party. Now they'll face Klaongar's army. He and the avariel must know what I know of their plans to lay siege to Paradise. Please tell me that the avariel ambassador is still here."   
"Your speed has saved us," Nalia told him. "He plans to return to Paradise at dawn."   
  
***  
  
As dawn broke again in Paradise, Onyx awoke from blissful dreams, his bride beside him. Exhausted from the night's revelry after their marriage, Aerie slept soundly still. Onyx walked again to the end of the room and looked out their the windows, past their balcony, over the land below. The evil below was not moving at the moment, and the large concentration of it sat still on the edge of Amn, but it had been growing in size. He concentrated harder and tried to see more than just its where, but its why. What purpose it served, where it was moving to, and who was behind it.   
Looking the other way, across the nearby mountaintops, he again saw the cloud of evil he knew to be the nearest cloud giant city. He saw no large movements - he had had his mind on it since the first raid - but tried to focus on its microstructure. Was it buzzing about more than usual, its pieces moving more amongst the cloud? Was it up to something? He thought he had sensed the last attack was more than a random pillaging raid, but he could not be sure. Regardless, he had taken to assuming it was such and attempting to foresee what would come next, and when. He could not.   
Only a rare sorcerer or the most powerful druids had been known to gain an inkling of foresight, and he had none. As such, he had to observe the game board as it stood and try to infer the implied next moves, but he could not. Where are you when I need you, Solar? he wondered. You always let me know enough that I could infer the right path, by following my moral code. Here, it cannot guide me as I am for the moment a bewildered bystander. You saw of things in motion and inferred what might come. Or the grove? Could - would - one there - see what he needed to know, would they recognize the severity of the evil and find it unbalancing enough to give me the information to confront it? Cernd? Jaheira?  
As Jaheira ran through his mind, Aerie's sweet dreams turned to nightmares of old fears and things that might have been. She awoke, frightened and pawing Onyx's empty side of the bed in vain - as she had in her dream just now. Here in the waking world, Onyx was merely across the room, and in a flash was back by her side, holding and soothing her.   
"It makes all the difference having you alongside me, husband," she cooed, holding onto his arm.   
"Forgive me, my love, I was for a moment ignorantly enjoying the beauty of the radiant dawn, which is yet pale and dim in comparison as I enjoyed just before and enjoy now the beauty of my bride," Onyx said out loud. He had taken to saying aloud only such quips of love to her, ironically more obvious than most of the things that he left in his thoughts for her to divine. He kissed her forehead gently and stroked her golden hair, trying to keep his mind on hers and off other matters and persons.   
"Oh Onyx, I shall never tire of hearing your comforting voice say such things," she giggled and kissed him. The knight spoke a few more such things and they tarried for awhile before Onyx left briefly to order breakfast from one of the servants. He was gone longer than expected, and Aerie began to wonder if he was helping slice food with one of his swords or some such nonsense as he was occasionally prone to. She then sensed worried thoughts coming from her husband downstairs. As she threw on a robe and prepared to go down, Onyx burst in, already gearing up. His news, the news that Valygar had given Nalia and the others, as well as the news of Cyran's first major victory over the Amnish, which no one in Paradise until this hour knew, flooded through her mind. Onyx held her as she staggered, overwhelmed at the monumental developments below - and at their altitude as well.   
He began thinking, the royalty of Paradise is doubtless informed of this already and the Order and the other professional societies must be as we speak. It is imperative that we go before them before the tide of opinion goes against what must be done. Before they fall to quarrel over the validity of information gained through an untrustworthy human politicians and originating from a lone ranger. Onyx gazed out the window again, furious with himself that, though the clouds of evil now made sense to him, he had not seen more earlier.   
Aerie spoke. "My love, you have done all you could. There is plenty of time to prepare still, and I like thinking that perhaps it was meant for us to have our wedding without the burden of this news."   
You're right, my bride, Onyx realized. I too am grateful we had the chance to marry in peace. Though perhaps it would have been nice to do so after crushing this evil.   
"Oh Onyx, it seemed like we were always planning like that, only to have yet another evil spring up as the last one fell. Go before them if you must, but my people know how to defend themselves. They will both anticipate and fend off the cloud giants - as they have many times in the past."   
There is more to it than that, Onyx thought. They are under the influence of another, greater evil and we do not know what surprises they may have in store.   
"Our adventuring companions on the ground will deal with them, love, and the avariel will repel Klaongar's goons. Help them to strategize if you wish, but we are vast and number and even your single powerful sword will not be needed. Please, my huaband, the father of my unborn child. Go not to the front lines for once. We are guests here, not soldiers. Enjoying our first days of marriage. Relax and enjoy yourself. And me." Aerie parted her robe slightly, and Onyx struggled to contain himself as he ran a hand over her cheek and down her side.   
"At least stay within the walls, my paladin. If a few do get through, don't you want to be there to defend me?" Batting her eyelashes, she gave him that irresistible wide-eyed look that had first enamored him of her with its innocence.   
Paladins were normally known for taking the back lines in a battle, to protect spellcasters and, in sieges such as the upcoming one, royalty and other civilians. This was a consequence more of their being less expandable and often of higher social bearing than conventional fighters, than of the tactical use of their spellcasting or other back-line functions. Onyx, in his large-scale battles to date, had however pioneered the aggressive use of paladins. Perhaps growing out of the cavalier's lionlike courage and disuse of missile weapons outside the throwing axe, he believed that the presence of holy warriors served to strike immediate fear into the hearts of evil opponents and give good an early advantage. Their abilities to heal themselves quickly, draw upon holy might, and hold, smite, or cause wounds to enemies also made them destructive forces to be reckoned with.   
Most of all, he had learned as an adventurer the essential tactic of quickly penetrating to an enemy's back lines and disrupting spellcasters and dispelling their enchantments. This often decided a battle and, as in the last cloud giant raid, Onyx was always eager to spearhead this daring, dangerous charge himself.   
But the avariel had many experienced paladins and fighter-mages, which were perhaps even more adept at surviving behind enemy lines and confronting their wizards - especially when opening instant dimension doors to the enemy's rear - and Onyx decided that perhaps they were well prepared to handle the onslaught. Onyx still wanted to brief the paladins and fighter-mages on a few obscure tactics and tricks. If they even apply to a flying army, he thought. Though, specialized in fighting dragons and demons, the cavalier was quite familiar with the mechanics of a flying enemy, he was used to the concept of flying allies. Maybe I am out of my element here and might as well stay back. And, weighing the personal value of staying back as Aerie's personal bodyguard, ready to slay any who came near her or even carry her to safety as necessary if her awesome spellcasting didn't blow the intruders to bits first, he decided this was one time to man the rear.   
"Oh thank you Onyx!" Aerie yelped, hopping into her husband's arms. "You've made the right decision. You don't know how much your concern means to me!"   
I may not have your extrasensory powers, but I think I have a pretty good idea, Onyx thought. I just hope I have as good an idea of what we are soon to face.  
  
IV. Siege on Heaven  
  
Paradise City was built on a steep mountaintop, Mount Paradise. A mountaintop which was part of the mountain range, but stuck out beside the main line of mountains. Only one narrow pass of walkable surface connected it to the other mountains. Though the avariel could fly in and out, raw materials, particularly the stone used for almost all of the city's construction, was not feasible for the weak avariel and fly in and out en masse so a path for carts and caravans was necessary. This path ran from the front gate of Paradise along the pass to the next mountaintop. It was, however, still relatively easy to defend the city from landbound mountain creatures such as giants. Archers, mages and catapults could fire into the pass, making it a death trap for invading armies. The mountain it connected to, Mount Limbo, stood slightly lower than Paradise, proving a range disadvantage to any who would try to fire back from across the path. As such, the city had withstood eons of attacks and never yet been critically threatened.  
Generally, during a siege it was necessary for the defenders to stage a force, of fighters at least, outside their own walls. Otherwise, even lacking the range advantage, it was not difficult for the attackers to get armored rams or destructive mages within range to damage and destroy the walls. This force would also be necessary to actually defeat and drive away the attacks, lest they merely bide their time and starve out the population within. The avariel could probably have manually flown enough food and supplies up from the lands below, albeit while racking up a debt from the Amnish or surface elves, but they did have ample reserves within Paradise for such situations. And though they probably could have destroyed any mages or rams that dared to come within firing range of the walls, evil armies were known for hosting kamikaze wild mages who would blindly run towards castle walls, blasting at them with wild magic and often able to do severe damage before dying from defending archers or their own unpredictable energy. And thus an army had to be stationed outside the walls.   
As the day of battle dawned, a large force of avariel warriors and spellcasters were thus outside the front gate of Paradise. The front line paladins, Onyx not among them, could easily detect the distance of the approaching cloud giant army. They were close, nearly in sight, soon they would walk over Mount Limbo's shallow top and come into sight. Onyx cold detect this too from the top of a turret over the main gate. He stood with a reserve battery of paladins, and many spellcasters, including Aerie, who stood close to him. Archers lined the walls, peering through archer slits, and catapults and scorpions stood along the roof behind them.   
Onyx was idly spinning Hangard's Axe around in his hand, studying the evil's movements and itching to make a toss with the throwing axe. Then he noticed, right at Mount Limbo's peak, a small but strong spark of the aura of good. He saw that the paladins below noticed it too. As the cloud giant army, enormous in size and almost shaking the mountain range with their cadence, came into view at the other end of the mountain, a lone figure, who had been sitting under a bush, invisible to the naked eye but generating the aura, stood up at the peak, between the giant and elven armies. From the martial artist's bright white close-fitting robe and golden tan close-shaved head, it appeared to be a monk. He had a pair of katanas sheathed behind his shoulders, and his hands were clasped as if in prayer. None knew it yet, but this was Kan. Moving slowly and gracefully, he turned to face the cloud giants. Suddenly he drew the two katanas, their glowing white and golden blades almost brightening the entire dawn sky, and snapped into a fighting stance.   
Klaongar, with Xzar and Cyran watching through the eyes and controlling his mind, ordered his front lines into a full charge at the lone monk. Klaongar bellowed, "To the peak of the mountain! Maintain the protocol! If you find a scout in your way, trample it quickly and then move into gate assault formation!" His front line of fighters began charging, staying in formation. Cyran's plan was to run this entire army forward as fast as possible, trying to get the destructive giant mages and the boulder-hurling giant fighters within range of the gate before the catapults and elf mages within blasted the army to bits. He knew the avariel had the upper hand in magic; he was betting on the vastly superior strength of the cloud giants to press the elven fighters far back and then blast the front wall down quickly and have the surviving fighters charge into the city, killing as many as possible. Though he just might be able to take down their mages within and take the entire city, in truth it was mass death, not the real estate of the city, that he wanted, and maximizing carnage was his objective.   
The avariel, with their keen eyesight, eagle-like and far beyond even that of surface elves, watched in amazement as a wall of giant warriors ran up to the monk. As they approached, he leapt high into the hair, kicking off the head of the front and center giant as he slashed forward with each katana and beheaded the giant to either side as well. As he flew over the middle giant's headless shoulders, his feet then planted on the chest of the giant behind, shattering his ribcage as the monk ran up his torso, beheading the next two giants in the columns to his left and right. Dodging the raised clubs and axes, the continued like this, making a beeline straight for Klaongar.   
"Full gate assault now, you fools!!!" the angry king roared. As three columns of his men continued to topple back like dominoes, the rest began charging towards the avariel army, mages mixed amongst the fighters, eyeing the gates and casting adjurations on themselves. The avariel army responded with a full charge, and the two sides flew into each other, a blizzard of weapons. The dexterous avariel feigned and dodged the giants' swings, hacking at them as they went, but when a powerful giantish blow did connect, it was usually fatal for the poor elf. The mages in the two armies began hurling evocations at each other. The avariel mages were fairly well magically protected, and the giantish mages somewhat so, but sides were soon racking up losses among the warriors.   
Onyx was watching with keen interest the progress towards the back lines of the avariel paladins and fighter-mages, and especially of this strange but fortunate monk, when he noticed dark specks on the horizon behind them. Though it would be a few more seconds before even the eagle-eyed avariel could make them out, the cavalier's blood began to boil and his eyes widened. He could smell it on the air. He could feel it in his heart. He knew what it was. "Dragons!" he roared like a lion, pointing his axe towards the horizon.   
The keenest-eyed archers squinted and could confirm it. "Red dragons! One huge ancient one and many fierce young ones! They'll burn us out!!" they cried. The town was constructed of stone, but flesh was not so fire resistant.   
"All cavaliers towards them immediately! They must not reach the city!" Onyx yelled as he put the axe back into his bag of holding and drew out the Dragon Shield and the Dragonslayer Sword. Glad he had already decided to suit up in the dragon helm and red dragon scale armor, he quickly summoned a small deva and strapped her onto his back. As the clerics began casting bless, prayer, resist fire, and strength of one (strong-as-a-giant Onyx was careful to avoid the effects of this last) upon the cavaliers, with a running leap they flew off over the walls and took flight towards the oncoming squadron of dragons.   
"Onyx! Be careful! I should have known it'd go like this!" Aerie whimpered as her husband flew off, a heavy body of muscle and metal held aloft only by a deva. If she dies, he dies, she thought. She understood the importance of stopping the dragons, and that her cavalier was not about to stay back, but why does something like this always happen? Next time I actually convince him to stay back, a gang of demons will show up on the horizon, oh, I just know it!!! She wiped away her tears and stood tall, fingertips outstretched and ready to blast anything that came within range.   
The company of cavaliers was rapidly approaching the dragons. They began to chant, and Onyx, familiar by now with the custom and the words, joined them.   
"Hark, do we see evil.  
Hark, do we see our enemy.   
Hark, does our duty bid us fight them  
And smite all that would harm our innocent and beloved.  
Hark, do we brave the breach  
Hark, do we go now into battle  
For all that is right and true  
And uphold the good that shall triumph, forever!"  
Shield and sword clashed against claw and fang in a dissonant medley of clangs and scratchings. Avariel knights engaged the various young dragons in battle to the death, deftly swooping around their gnashing teeth and claws and their swinging tails and their blasts of fire. Onyx and two other cavaliers engaged the ancient dragon. Onyx skillfully avoided its tail while parrying its claws and bites with his shield and sword, and trying to catch its breath across his shield and chest to protect the deva, who was not immune to fire as he now was. The paladins fought gracefully and valiantly and the dragons fiercely and hungrily, and each side began taking losses as avariel were slashed, bashed or burned and dragons were stabbed and hacked, each dying or losing his ability to fly, a death sentence in itself. The ancient dragon bit into one of the cavaliers, cooked the trapped elf with firebreath, and then swallowed him whole. Onyx hacked into the dragon's limbs and body, but had yet to significantly slash its wings, hack open its throat or pierce its heart. The other cavalier managed to tatter part of the old wyrm's wing, but not enough to bring it down, before he was smashed by its mighty tail and fell lifeless to the battle below. Onyx flew up in front of the dragon's face and, as it opened his mouth to bite and breath on him, he stopped both fire and tooth by wedging his shield between its teeth as they clamped together and then blinded it with a mighty back-and-forth slash of his sword. The dragon screamed and fire bellowed from its mouth as Onyx removed his shield and swooped down to its belly and, gaining speed, flew straight at it and plunged Dragonslayer deep into the dragon's chest, piercing its heart. The wyrm let out a mortally wounded roar as Onyx pushed with all his might and dragged the sword around in its heart, cutting it apart and slaying the awesome beast. But as it died, it reached for him and both its foreclaws sank deep into the deva's body. She let out a dying moan and vanished from the plane.   
Suddenly, Onyx could feel the beast's body grow heavy as its wings ceased to flap. Thinking quickly, he switched the shield for the sword Angurvadal and, stabbing firmly into dragonflesh with each longsword as he went, began crawling around its body towards it back as the huge carcass began to plunge. When he reached the base of the untattered wing, he began to shear it away from the body, and, putting his swords away and pulling along the edge of the lifelessly flapping wing, grabbed its far tip as he separated the last corner of the base with a mighty tug. He leapt away from the body and into the open air, gripping each end of the wing tightly and holding his hands together over his head, trying to curve the wing around so that it would open up and serve as a natural parachute. Aerie, watching all this from the turret, nearly fainted at the sight of her love plummeting from high in the sky like a stone towards the ground below. He continued to hurtle downwards, gradually twisting his grip on the wing in a difficult struggle to get it to open fully.   
Onyx saw visions of his days in Candlekeep flash before his eyes. Long, dull hours in the stuffy library and adventurous days running through the surrounding fields. Playing, walking, or talking with Imoen as the sea winds blew her wild hair about. His early training as a warrior and devoting himself to becoming a paladin. His first, lost love, taken away from him and far to the east. His many adventures throughout Faerun and other planes. To no being in particular, he began to pray. I have spent my days in pursuit of many things. Much that I have not done, I ought to have done. But nothing that I have done, ought I not have to been done. Much I will do that I have not yet done. And those things I will never do, I regret that they will not be done. But at this moment, I know what I must do, and wish only to use the next few minutes well.   
Managing to fully pull the wing around, he got it caught in the full wind and it billowed into a taut curve. He lost speed and began to float down at a fast but survivable clip. He began to make out the details of the battle raging below. A few evocations and hurled boulders were flying at the gate and walls, taking out small chunks. The avariel still held the back half of the pass and giants were few and dying quickly there. Aerie and the other spellcasters and the archers in the turrets were quickly shooting and blasting away any giants that came within range. Further down the pass, the cloud giants were fighting the elves that had rushed amongst them. Many of the division of giant mages and shamans in the back lay dead, but many still remained and most still casting and protected by a few fighters. He saw avariel paladins and fighter-mages, charging at them bravely, breaching and dispelling their magics and attacking them, but many getting smashed, slashed, or blasted themselves in the process.   
He noticed that strange monk, still leaping from giant to giant, taking out mages as fast as he could and trying in vain to get to Klaongar, who stood with an inner circle of his most powerful wizards, all surrounded by a thick ring of fighters. Avariel magic-users were hurling spells into them, but Klaongar and the mages were well protected. Steering the parachute with his arms, he aimed straight for the evil king. As Onyx got down to the right height and managed to position himself over the king, he let go of the wing and drew Carsomyr as he fell, pointing it down and straight at Klaongar. As he fell, Kan saw his chance and leapt high into the air, over the ring of fighters and towards Klaongar as well. The mighty and wise king raised both of his massive clubs and, as each hero fell upon him, smashed them both aside and to the ground. The mages immediately began preparing powerful spells aimed at the two. Onyx regained his feet and cleaved through them with Carsomyr, disrupting and spells and dispelling their protections. Kan leapt up and slashed at them while parrying and reflecting spells back at the mages with his katanas, causing them to disintegrate themselves.   
As the fighters closed in and Klaongar raised his clubs to smash them both a final time, the strong Onyx went into a whirlwind attack and bashed aside the fighters' weapons while hewing into giantish flesh and the quick Kan darted and rolled among their legs, cutting them with his katanas and knocking them back all around him with telekinetic force rippling from his fists and feet. As avariel warriors and wizards began shooting, swinging, and casting at the fighters from the outside, Onyx and Kan felled many from within. As the ring of fighters thinned, the paladin and the monk turned back towards Klaongar and, still narrowly dodging his huge clubs, Onyx impaled him through the gut with Carsomyr as Kan leapt high and used both blades to behead him. As Kan killed him, he felt his blood quicken as his mind flash back to the thousands of kills of evildoers he had made over his career. Onyx sensed the power surging into the monk.   
Xzar and Cyran grabbed the sides of their heads and screamed in torment as their link with Klaongar was broken. "link too weak i could have won it your powers were diminished foolish necromancer" Cyran ranted angrily at Xzar.   
"What!?" Xzar responded. "The link was perfect!!!! It was Klaongar's clumsy body that lost it for you master....I hated being in his head anyway....it made me.....tense.....I'm not nice when I'm...tense!!" He bit his knuckles and continued to babble insanely.   
Cyran merely looked across his own battle, but his thoughts were own the paladin and the monk he had just seen through Klaongar's eyes. He had suspected - and sensed in Xzar's twisted mind - that the paladin was the legendary Onyx, whom he had successfully occupied with the cloud giants while he did battle in Amn. But neither wizard knew the identity of the other hero.  
The remaining cloud giants began to scatter and flee and the avariel, with heavy losses but still great in number, chased or shot them down. As the sounds of battle died, they let out a fatigued cheer. The gates opened and crying civilians began to rush to find their loved ones, looking hopefully among the faces of those walking and then fearfully at the faces of those lying dead. Kan and Onyx faced one another, having known they were on the same side from the start but each continuing to size up his mysterious ally. Despite the bloody battle, Kan's fighting robe was as pure white as ever. His skin was a deep and healthy tan; like Onyx's. Kan's hair was cut extremely short however, nearly bald, like most monks. He was obviously younger, he had the face of a boy who had quickly and recently grown a young man's body. Almost as muscular but more compact - Onyx's great natural strength had been magically enhanced several times during his travels - the monk's body did make him remember his younger self. The youth seemed as if he had grown too fast somehow - hasted too often perhaps.   
"I am Onyx, a paladin. Surely each of us is wondering how the other human came to be involved in the battle between cloud-dwelling creatures," spoke Onyx.   
"I know of you, great Onyx," Kan began, his voice warm and calm. "All know of you and the tales. You are here with the great priestess and mage Aerie, the adventuring companion you came here to marry."   
"Yes, and if I know my lore, I believe I may have heard a tale of one that might be you," spoke Onyx. "A mysterious monk who came out of the great desert. Mind, katanas, hands, and feet dealing swift death to evil."   
"Then the bards have not stretched the tale so much you did not recognize me. I am Kan."   
"But they say little of you, noble monk. Who are you, other than a great avenger?" Onyx asked.   
Kan took a deep breath - he did not often speak of his past - and began. "I was raised in a monastery in Kara-Tur. Discipline in learning, training and meditation were my sole pursuits there. As I grew in power, I found I could move faster than any monk, that my focused mind could slow the world around me and yet my body could remain fast. Training endlessly in martial arts, often at supernormal speed, I grew rapidly. Though grown to a young man, I am but a child in years in this world. When at last I became what I am, the wise head of my order recognized the time was right and bid me go out in to the world and do as I have done. He said he believed I would be the one to fulfill a prophecy, but more he would not say. I left and thus a bard or two in these western lands picked up on my deeds since, of which you have apparently heard."   
"And what of before that?" asked Onyx. "Surely you were not born to these monks?"   
"I was left by my young mother - and her parents - I was very, very young, but I remember it well. I was born on their journey and left behind as they traveled still. A baby yet, I learned not their tongue, but passing my memories over in my mind in the years since, seeing the meaning of their words in their faces, I know what came to pass. They bade her to leave me - she wished not to - she cried and begged them. They told her they would come back - they never did at least before I left, why I can not say - and I knew nothing since of them. They were not from Kara-Tur. They were from, I believe, the west. And, in your lands, learning these western tongues, I know that it is such a tongue they spoke. The place they were from - I remember the sounding of the word clear - was Can-del-keep."   
Onyx studied Kan's flat cheeks and angular jaw. He peered deeper into Kan's haunting steel-blue eyes. Familiar. Where? "And, child in years, do you remember your mother's name?" asked Onyx. If Kan was a child in years, he should know the young mother.   
"Yes." stated Kan, studying Onyx's face and thinking things. Onyx recognized his eyes. A clear pond. A mirror. Myself. The monk spoke, "It was Araschel."   
Onyx nodded. "I too am from Candlekeep, and she was my first love. A lost love. Gone with her parents to Kara-Tur. Carrying something I gave her. Carrying a child. You are my son."   
As the two walked back towards Paradise, Onyx looked down at the land below. He could sense that the evil had been decimated in number, but that the power had consolidated. Suddenly he detected a distinct surge in it at a single point. As they continued walking, Onyx told Kan of him of the news from the lands below, of the army of Cyran which had been raiding across Amn and was attack de'Arnise Keep as they spoke. He told Kan all he knew of Araschel, and of how he had no memory of his mother at all and knew not even her identity. He told him also about Kan's new stepmother Aerie and his unborn half-sibling.   
Kan told Onyx of his training. As soon as he had become strong enough to wield them, he had begun practicing to dual-wield katanas and continued his already highly advanced martial arts training. He had been given by his sensai two unenchanted but finely crafted katanas, and as he practiced and increased in skill and strength, so too his katanas became increasingly enchanted and gained in power and accuracy. As Kan's speed increased and he became able to dodge weapons, missiles and spells, so too his katanas gained the ability to deflect and even reflect them. He had also wore form-fitting gloves and boots, which had stretched in size as he grew and had grown from mundane clothing into powerful items able to deal piercing damage from his fingertips and toes, slashing damage from the edges of his hands and feet, and massive crushing damage from his knuckles and heels. By concentrating, he could even cause ripples in space and send telekinetic projections of his fists and feet through the air. Other than his few memories of his mother and the various minor evils he had slain since leaving the monastery, all he knew was the years spent focused on perfecting his body and mind.   
The gates were beginning to open and clerics were spilling out, rushing to heal the injured. Onyx looked around for Aerie. She had disappeared from the high turret above, and she would probably be making her way out soon to lend her considerable healing powers and to find him. Just then a bright column of light descended from the heavens, and a deva stood proudly as it faded. "You have fought well, Onyx and Kan. The cloud giant threat is no more, but grave matters far below require your attention," Solar sang.   
"Take us to the battle below, that we may crush the evil there!" Onyx declared as Kan nodded.   
"Cyran synchronized the battles with good reason, brave Onyx, yet that is where I will now take you. There is much to be explained." With that, the three of them disappeared.   
Aerie, just rushing out the gates, recognized Solar's celestial aura and sensed what had just transpired. She hung her head and tried in vain to hold back the tears as she went about healing her many gravely injured brethren.   
  
V. War on Land  
  
A little earlier, as the battle in the clouds above was just beginning and dawn was moving west towards central Amn, Nalia stood on the top turret of her family's keep. With her stood Imoen and Imoen's old friend Xan. Onyx, Imoen and company had rescued him from the Nashkel mines nearly two years ago now, and, hearing of his friends' plight, he had come down to lend his now considerable magical powers. His demeanor was not so helpful, however.   
"Look at this old pile of stones, we'll never win, they'll knock it to pebbles!" he moaned. "We're all doomed for sure, you know."   
"Heya, cheer up Xan," perked up Imoen. "Look at all our warriors below. Look at the archers and catapults on the lower turrets of the keep. And the other spellcasters up here with us. They'll be lucky to get close enough to make out the mortarwork before we blast 'em away!"   
"I believe the day can be ours, but we must be careful and resolute," opinionated Nalia. "And remember that our foremost duty is to destroy these invaders so they may not terrorize the unfortunate villagers of my lands."   
A large fighting force was assembled around the keep below. As with Paradise, it had to be outside the walls. In the very front lines were a large mass of fighters, commanded by Mazzy, and Keldorn helmed some forward paladins and fighter-mages. Along the two front flanks were two divisions of rangers, led by Minsc and Valygar. Behind the warriors, Anomen led a force of clerics. Mages stood on the various turrets of the keep. Nalia, Imoen and Xan stood around an enchanted crystal which would increase the ranges of their spells, allowing them to blast enemy mages that came within range of blasting the walls. Jan walked among the various catapults and scorpions, tweaking them, snapping cords, muttering and scratching his head and scribbling calculations. He had been busy the past few weeks inventing modified war machines which could fire further and faster and use new explosive ammunition, huge variants of his flasher master bruiser mates.   
Thanks to Valygar's detailed intelligence, Nalia and friends had assembled a counterattack plan. The columns of rangers were to rush the field, finding and killing the hidden squads of rogues Cyran loved to use. They would then let Cyran's army charge to let it come within range of their tower machines and mages. Keldorn would lead the paladins and fighter-mages deep into enemy territory to try to take out their spellcasters while Mazzy's and Anomen's forces would try to fight and hold off the incoming warriors, hopefully with the aid of the keep's mechanical and magical offenses, enhanced by the crystal and Jan's innovations.   
But where were Jaheira and the grove? Nalia bit her lip, uncomfortably wondering where those wavering druids were, hoping they were approaching soon but fearing they were deliberately abstaining.  
Far across the field, marching into view with the first rays of dawn, came the huge Army of Cyran. A massive wall of fighters was in front. A large number of human or half-elven recruits and indoctrinated slaves, they were commanded from the center by a large, powerful man who had a personal vendetta against the day's opponent, for they were friends of his half-brother, who had given him a mortal body once again but then cast him aside, as his half-brother had cast aside the godhood which he had so hungrily desired. And so he had allied himself with Cyran, a similarly-aligned but psychotic man who could help him deliver his revenge. Sarevok sneered and itched to draw his sword, Soul Reaver. Alongside these fighters was a company of dwarven mercenaries that Cyran had hired. In exchange for slaves, they lent their axes to Cyran, under their own company leader Korgan, who had a bloodthirsty desire for slaves and the spoils of war. For him, a chance to hack apart the goody-goodies who had rejected him at a slums tavern long ago was merely the sauce on the steak.   
In front of the many fighters, already hidden and moving quickly, were Cyran's force of rogues. They were led by Eldoth, gulping down an invisibility potion, and Skie, hidden in the grass. After several Sword Coast escapades with mixed results, the scheming couple had come down to join Cyran seeking fame and fortune. Around them, their thieves snaked silently through the grass, hungry for loot and blood.   
Behind the fighters stood several denominations of evil clerics. There were many priests of Cyric, as well a hired sect of Shar-worshipping drow exiles who were willing to crusade under the banner of Cyric or any evil opponent of that hideous creature Lolth. Leading them all, standing by Sarevok in the center between the fighters and clerics, wearing shapely black armor with a mace and shield to match, was Viconia.   
After the electric-eyed warrior Sarevok had been expunged from Onyx's disappearing pocket plane, he had first met Viconia doing unholy things in the graveyard district of Athkatla and been immediately enchanted. She, seeing Onyx's likeness in him, and most bitter towards the self-righteous paladin who had puritanically cast her aside despite the secret flash of desire she had seen in his face, had found sick pleasure in taking out her frustration on Sarevok, who bore it with roaring laughter and evil delight. "Eh? Paladin, did you call me, my dark queen? Hardly! I couldn't be more fallen from the sanctimonious perch!"  
Behind the clerics was a force of uniformly evil and mostly psychotic wizards and sorcerers. Cyran stood at their center, flanked by Xzar on one side and Edwin on the other. Though Edwin despised the mental instability of the other chaotic evildoers (the cold, calculating evil is ever so much more effective), he could not resist being part of the best bet for taking down Amn (more than part, really, my considerable magical talents may very well make the difference). Surrounding the three evil archmages were Cyran's usual bodyguards and some golems Edwin had conjured up for the battle.   
Once the evil army had reached the prescribed landmark, Minsc and Valygar exchanged glances across the front line and began to lead their columns of rangers forward. Casting detect invisibility, they fanned out across the seemingly-empty field and ran at top speed, swinging various armaments in their hands and looking for rogues to whack. Cyran understood immediately what was happening. Thieves would be no match for rangers, unless they could get in the first backstab or the thief-mages could blast them away. Hopefully, some of them would simply manage to pass undetected.   
Scattered thwacks were heard as rangers began detecting thieves in the grass and smashing and beheading them, trying to keep up their pace and look for more. A few brave woodsmen went down as thieves found them first, planting blades in their backs. Minsc ran along with Ixil's Spear, stapling thieves into the dirt and continuing along as they helplessly bled to death. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder as an arrow stuck into it. He began to feel sickly as he detected Eldoth, who was drawing back another poison-coated arrow. The ranger's hardy body bore the damage and he rushed forth, spear straight towards the bard. Before Eldoth could fire, Minsc was upon him and Eldoth had to draw his sword. He managed to deflect the first stabs with his buckler, but Minsc too evaded his swings. As Ixil's Spear glanced the buckler again, it let out huge barbs and stapled the tiny shield onto Eldoth's hand. Screaming, he made one last swipe towards Minsc, who parried it with the spear's shaft while driving the head straight through him. Slinging the bard's dying body off his spear, he continued to run.   
Slashing the life from many a thief, Valygar kept the katanas Celestial Fury and Hindo's Doom outstretched as he ran. Then he detecting a smirking lady thief flipping forked daggers in her fingers as she ran straight for him. As Valygar swung to take her out, Skie cackled and dove between his legs and slashing one calf, popping out behind him but unable to backstab him before Valygar spun around and countered her. Skie managed to stop his katana blows in the forks of her daggers, kicking him in the chest several times and getting one swipe across his arm, but Valygar soon hasted himself and, with blows to spare, managed to slash Skie to ribbons.   
Sarevok commanded a battalion of fighters to rush towards each column of rangers. Along with Korgan and the dwarven mercenaries, he led the mass of the fighters in a full charge forward towards the main opposing army. The drow clerics and Viconia, as well as some of the wizards and Edwin, began following them. Edwin eyed the top turret of the keep. He could feel the magical energy concentrated there and stroked his beard, sneering. Keldorn prepared the paladins and fighter-mages to make a courageous dash into the enemy at the right moment, their goal to survive their way through the fighters and begin taking out spellcasters. Mazzy and the Amnish fighters braced themselves for the onslaught of the enemy fighters, prepared to go toe-to-toe with them but hoping for some assistance from spells and catapult stones.   
Cyran smirked. Thus Amnish buffoons had led their forces too far from the keep. He could see the many mages and machines within it, but they would be out of range while he decimated the Amnish army. Despite he loss of most of his thieves, his fighters and spellcasters, superior in number, would surely dispose of the field army, and then the keep could be blasted to bits and all the farms and towns from here to Athkatla would be ripe for the picking.   
As his fighters neared, he screamed and spasmed in rage as exploding catapult stones, scorpion bolts, and magical evocations began slamming into his forces from the still-distant keep. The Amnish mages were standing in rings around the crystal and firing spells at the raiders below. The enchanter Xan was causing them to drool like idiots and spin around and start attacking one another. Nalia and Imoen were causing huge incendiary clouds and horrid clouds of wilting energy to burn and shrivel their flesh. Jan's upgraded catapults and scorpions were firing further than war machines had in Faerun before. Huge flasher master bruiser mates slammed into the enemy fighters, exploding and taking out dozens apiece.   
The Cyricists remained large in number and as they mixed with the Amnish fighters, a clamorous symphony of clangs, crashes, smashes and screams was heard. Blood and steel flew everywhere as the Cyricists ran into the Amnish at full speed. Keldorn gave the word and his forces began their dangerous dash behind enemy lines, towards Viconia's clerics and Edwin's mages. Anomen and the good clerics began casting hold person, holy smite and other spells at their opposing fighters, freezing and destroying many. The drow clerics began casting back with the same spells or their unholy variants and the Amnish fighters found themselves victims of those spells as well as of the destructive magics and summoned beings from Edwin and his wizards.   
Amidst the frontline melee, Korgan ran about frothing at the mouth and swinging the fiery axe Stonefire about. Wielding her short sword, Mazzy came upon him as he cleft an Amnish soldier in half and cauterized the wound with one blow. The evil dwarf looked upon the noble halfling for a moment, and then charged her in rage. She stepped aside, swiping at him as his axe swung through air. They continued to circle and attack, sword and axe clanging against armor and shield. The more deft Mazzy managed to get in more small stabs and hacks, while avoiding most of Korgan's mighty swings, but he did catch her once across the shield arm shoulder, and she cried out as the mighty dwarf cleft in and injured her. She dropped her shield as the blood drained from her left arm, but then she pierced Korgan's armor with a critical hit and impaled him with her short sword. As he lifted Stonefire to smash in her head, she twisted her sword and gutted him, and frothing and cursing, he dropped his axe onto his own head and fell back onto the bloody grass, dead.   
As she knelt and breathed heavily, a huge, dark warrior slashed through Amnish soldiers like butter and came upon her. She recognized the infamous Sarevok and stood, regaining her strength, to confront him. He drew Soul Reaver, an evil and fearsome two-handed sword. He swung it down at her and she tried to parry, but it carried through and hit her across the shoulder again. She felt herself weaken as it hit her, and as the draining Soul Reaver found her again and again, she found her aim with her sword diminish each time. At last, with a critical strike, Sarevok swung clean through her arm and her short sword fell to the ground. She tried to run at and bite him with a last, valiant effort, but the sword came down upon her, slicing down through her. Her left and right halves fell to the ground as Sarevok bellowed contentedly and clambered towards another foe.   
As the fighters on both sides took heavy losses, clerics found themselves having to cast desperately and draw out their flails, hammers, and maces and go at enemy fighters or even other clerics. Many were crushed, held, burnt, or destroyed. Anomen and Viconia, swinging and casting angrily, came upon one another amidst the supernatural fray. As Anomen called a bolt of glory down onto the witch, she sent a wave of destruction at him. He resisted it as electricity coursed through her body. Spasming and screaming from the electric current, she regained her composure and conjured a globe of blades around herself as he cast powerful harming energy into his hammer and came at her. She caught the hammer with her shield as tiny blades raked over his armor, some piercing or finding their way through and cutting into his flesh. As he winced and swung again, crashing into her armor but not hurting her, she commanded a small earthquake to appear at his feet. It sucked him into the ground and, with tectonic force, crushed his immobile body. Sighing with relief and wiping the sweat from her blue skin, she looked about for her next victim.   
As clerics diminished in number on both sides, Edwin's mages, evil fighters around them struggling to protect them from the remaining Amnish fighters, came within range of the castle. He could feel the energy from atop the keep even more acutely now, and sensed their accursed crystal. No matter, he thought, pulling back the sleeves of his red robe and wiggling his fingers, I am now within range myself. Pointing up and sending terrible energy through his fingertips, he conjured gates to open in the air above the keep. Demons, elementals, skeletons, and invisible stalkers were summoned and fell amongst the people within. The creatures began running wildly about, tearing into flesh and machinery. The reserve paladins struggled to protect the mages. Inquisitors saw through the invisibility of the stalkers as cavaliers expertly combated the demons and the undead hunters knocked the skeletons to bones and dust.   
"Oh no what a zoo like at all these summons!" yelped Jan, firing exploding crossbow ammo and powerful spells into them and trying to protect his new inventions. "They're smashing my latest gizmos back to the stone age!"   
Xan managed to turn some of the monsters on each other as Nalia an Imoen hit the elementals with the various types of energy they most feared. After destroying the invaders, they turned their attention to Edwin and his wizards, who were starting to blast open the front gate. Nalia looked upon Edwin below and choked back bitter anger. The red wizard stood for everything she hated, the skillful and knowing manipulation of people and institutions to crush those weaker than himself and accrue his own power. She knew also what he had done to Minsc's witch, the late Dyanheir which she had never known, and it was all the two could do to keep from openly attacking him when Onyx led their party into dealings with him and other most unsavory characters of the Athkatla underworld.   
Sensing her thoughts, Edwin's mind shot back at her from far below. Time for you and your big heart do die, he hissed. (You should thank me for killing you now, you wouldn't want to see what's going to happen to the people of this land soon after). I'll soon put that delusional ranger out of his misery too. (I never did thank Irenicus for putting Dyanheir out of hers. He was a bit too unstable for me, but overall I liked his style). Ahh yes, he hissed, I see you sense much, perhaps you are not as far below my own intelligence as I thought. (too bad you didn't see through the illusionary face I wore at council meetings until now, when it is much too late my dear).   
Their fingers shot out at one another, powerful energies crossing through the air, and dissipating the spell deflections they wore. Imoen blasted away at the mages surrounding Edwin as they continued to pummel the walls. Xan tried to wrest control of the Thayvian's mind, but he resisted it, and conjured a cloud of flame arrows from his fingertips to fly at the enchanter. Some of them absorbed his spell protections and the rest shot through his body, piercing and burning the unhardy elf.   
"Oh my friends, we are truly finished!" he moaned as he fell dead onto the stone. Suppressing their fright and channeling their anger, Imoen and Nalia stood side by side, arms outstretched, casting their most powerful spell protections as Edwin renewed his own defenses. The girls began shooting spellstrike and pierce shield at Edwin, knocking out his spell protections, while he shot out a spellstrike at each of them in turn and dispelled theirs. The girls shot meteor and comet storms at him, but with a snap of his fingers he froze time. He brought up another spell trap, a spell shield, and protected himself from magical energy, upped his magical resistance, then gated in a pit fiend above their heads.   
As time returned to normal, their evocations blew harmlessly around him, and the girls rolled out of the way as the demon crashed down between them. They leapt through the air onto other turrets below, each shooting out a ruby ray of reversal in midair and dissipating his spell shield and then his spell trap. As they landed and power words shot from Edwin towards them, they drew out wands of spellstriking and began to zap away Edwin's protection from energy and drain his magic resistance. Both of them were too strong to be stunned by the power words, and Imoen summoned a stack of energy blades into her hands while Nalia prepared a magical blast of dragon's breath. As Edwin desperately prepared his next spell, he was disrupted by a slicing stream of magical discs cutting through his body. Imoen continued to hurl them at lightning speed and Nalia's phantasm dragon head breathed a burning cloud of fire over the red wizard, cremating him. The girls briefly shared a telepathic victory cheer, but the battle was far from won.   
As Xzar and Cyran were just now seeing Klaongar's death, Keldorn and the half of his warriors had made it through the huge melee and were charging towards them and the fallen paladins, golems, and other mages surrounding them. The few rangers who had survived the flanking fighters joined from either side. The good warriors quickly began hacking away at the golems and unholy warriors. The evil mages and good fighter-mages traded spells, raising and lowering various protections and casting destructive energy at each other. As muscle and magic on both sides fell, Keldorn made his way into the mages and began slaying them with his sword Hallowed Redeemer and dispelling and seeing through their magics. He approached Xzar, sword ready for a killing strike, but the necromancer cast forth a mysterious orb which swallowed Keldorn and imprisoned him deep in the earth. As Minsc ran up him, crushing other enemies with wildly swinging maces Storm Star and Skullcrusher, Xzar prepared another orb for him, but Minsc was already upon him and swung his maces in from each side, smashing Xzar's deranged head to a pulp between them and sending out a burst of chain lightning that fried the remaining mages.   
Nearby, Cyran was destroying other oncoming warriors with powerful spells. After he disintegrated another ranger, Valygar flew at him with katanas blazing and Cyran the crazy kensai-mage had only enough time to draw Lies and Madness. The two danced around each other, katanas whirling and clanging furiously. Valygar hasted himself and moved at double speed, trying to get Celestial Fury or Hindo's Doom through his opponent. Cyran sneered and sped himself up as well, in a twisted manner that seemed to cause him to hop around Valygar, everywhere at once. The ranger got one slash across Cyran's chest, but the twisted one cartwheeled back and, as Valygar charged him, leapt high over his head and, as he landed, imprisoned Valygar. He slew with skillful blows the next few warriors who ran at him and cast another imprisoning sphere over Minsc, as his two remaining bodyguards slew the last remaining good warriors. As they went down, Cyran, already nearly regenerated, suddenly felt his blood quicken and an energizing wave of power wash over him, and cackled triumphantly  
"Have enough power enough kills now have we!!!! Return must we now to Ith!" he roared. Looking back down the field, he saw that both he and Amn were nearly depleted of field soldiers, and the keep gate had been severely blasted but not yet penetrated. The small remaining forces continued to hack each other to bits. One of his bodyguards sounded a horn, and his remaining troops began running back up the field. As the more valiant half of the Amnish stragglers followed them, Cyran sheathed his katanas and, outstretching his fingers and yawning, blasted the pursuers into oblivion. Sarevok, Viconia, and the few remaining fighters and clerics finished running and stood before Cyran. He looked them over. Matter-of-factly, he polymorphed his remaining fighters into horses. The rest of them mounted and rode off, back to Mouth Ith.   
  
VI. The Path Not Taken  
  
Moments later, as the remaining clerics were healing the few Amnish left alive and Nalia and Imoen were running across the battlefield to the site of the imprisonments, Solar teleported down near the archmages with Onyx and Kan. As Nalia read a freedom spell from a scroll, Imoen saw her brother and happily leapt over to him.   
"Ya missed it brother, ya big slowpoke!" she giggled, giving him a hug.   
"Dear sister, I don't suppose you remember - I believe you stole her favorite necklace once - Araschel?" Onyx asked.   
Imoen looked puzzled, but responded "Sure I do, it was just a joke to get to stop being such a prissy lil' stick-in-the-mud. And as I recall, you heroically stole it back. You two sure were sweet on each other, I remember that for sure!" Only time - until prissy Aerie showed up - that you ever put another gal before me, Imoen's darker side realized.  
"You remember well," Onyx chuckled. "But I gave her more than her necklace back." Imoen's bright eyes started to dart back and forth between the faces of the two men. "I gave her a son. Your nephew. And now, a monk of Kara-Tur, he has returned, and fought the cloud giants above most valiantly."  
"He is much more than that," Solar stated, as Keldorn, Minsc and Valygar reappeared and gasped for fresh air. "If Cyran nears his mad goal, it will be Kan and Kan alone who can stop him. He does not fight for gold or slaves or conquest of Amn. He fights for lust of blood, for enough blood to be able to obtain that which you forsook, Onyx."   
All gasped except Onyx, who had become increasingly certain such was the case, and Kan, who was beginning to understand his purpose.   
"As you did so, Onyx, Tymora and Beshaba flipped a coin, one side good and one evil, do determine who would ascend to it. Cyran seeks to influence the flip of this coin, and has just gained the power to. Kan now has the power and the opportunity to influence it as well. They have become the two faces of the coin. You must go now to Mouth Ith, where I can not, and seek Cyran. All will be decided there." With that, she was gone.  
The party ran back to the keep, gathering horses and a group of rangers to accompany them. They set out riding hard to Mouth Ith. Onyx detailed the battle between the cloud giants and the avariel, as well as the story of Kan. Imoen told her brother and nephew of the outcome of the battle at de'Arnise Keep, of how Cyran had not taken the keep but losses on both sides had been very heavy. As they were above, thought Onyx, letting his sister hear his thoughts. Exactly what Cyran wanted. Gaining strongholds was a ruse from the beginning. He knew this day would bring him enough kills. What he did not know was that it has done the same for my son. Nalia mentioned her bewilderment at the absence of the druids, and the party concurred. Either they had not sided against evil this day, or already been wiped out by Cyran.   
As they rode through a valley crisscrossed with streams and gulleys, they found the answer as they came upon the missing druids. They made a line across the valley, along with animals that had been summoned, charmed, or shapeshifted into. Brandishing spears and scimitars, the still-humanoid ones jeered at the force of good approaching them. Onyx noticed Jaheira among them, and could feel her sensing him. A werewolf ran out before them and shapeshifted into Cernd.   
"Dear friends," he began, "my heart falls as a leaf in autumn to see you confronting us so. You have sanctimoniously crushed the Cyricsts without mercy. Is it no longer acceptable in Amn for those whom you call evil to worship their own gods or live outside your strict laws?"   
"...or burn down homes and farms, take thousands of slaves, and torture and kill indiscriminantly? Not acceptable at all," stated Onyx firmly.   
"But you have destroyed their army now," countered the shapeshifter. "Surely you do not need to pursue the few survivors back to their own hearth and home and destroy them completely. Even the most ferocious lion has a limit to his appetite. Ah, but I suppose that is not your way of things, tireless paladin."   
"Stand aside. You know nothing. They are led by a madman with an unquenchable thirst for blood, and he wishes to become a god. If such a wave of death as will be his wake fits your idea of balance," asked Onyx rhetorically but truthfully, "then perhaps you had best reevaluate the balance of your own head."   
"Dear Bhaalspawn," cajoled Cernd, "I know of what you speak. I know this Cyran would ascend the throne you ceded. But I realize the throne is that of murder. Bhaal's portfolio belongs, by nature, in his hands of an evil god. That is balanced. As the wolf feasts upon the lamb, so the murder of some innocents is the unalterable course of nature." The good force dismounted and stepped forward. Minsc and Valygar could see things were going to get ugly, and charmed the horses into running back a ways to wait things out.   
"Only one thing is unalterable," stated Onyx. "My path this day. Make way or you will be made to." The druids took a step forward.   
"As the mother bird who pushes her young from her nest, I see now that I must teach you the difficult way. For the greater balance, I'm afraid you will have to be destroyed," Cernd sighed.  
Onyx drew out The Axe of the Unyielding and also Blackrazor. It had been unconventional enough that he was a dual-wielding paladin, but as word had spread of his obtaining and use of the evil, vampiric Blackrazor, he had become a controversial cavalier indeed. He had obtained the blade in hell itself, and then had to yield it to a djinni to pass, not daring the ignoble act of killing it. But he had hungered for Blackrazor still, and bade Imoen pickpocket it back again. Since then, a paladin wielding the evil blade had been the cause of much gossip. Onyx in fact enjoyed capitalizing on this, giving speeches before the Order of the Radiant Heart as well as Athkatla and Paradise at large about the careful manipulation of evil in order to destroy further evil. Anomen, though once a neutral himself, had been Onyx's fierce opponent in this and the two had divided the Order in this matter even as both had risen through its ranks. And now he would dual-wield it and the holy Axe of the Unyielding against the druids, showing them that neither good nor evil was truly their ally this day.  
The druids gasped as Blackrazor's dark aura glimmered. Cernd gave a fierce cheer and the druids began casting spells as the animals charged. The druids grew barkskins, conjured fire elementals, and called entangling vines and bolts of lightning upon the party. The rangers had quickly drawn their bows and began shooting druids rapidly, disrupting and injuring them. Kan joined in with telekinetic fists and feet. Minsc drew out the Wave halberd and began charging towards the fire elementals. Valygar fired arrows with his elven court bow in between charming animals that ran at him. Keldorn ran forward and began dispelling druidic enchantments and slashing druids themselves with Hallowed Redeemer. Onyx cut them apart and stole their strength as he hacked through them with the dark blade and the vorpal axe.  
Nalia weakened the druid's resistances with greater malison and Imoen followed it up with chaos. Druids began attacking one another as ranger arrows and Valygar's katanas flew into them. Minsc was snuffing out fire elementals left and right with the Wave, and Keldorn was slicing druids and animals open with Hallowed Redeemer as did Onyx now with Blackrazor and the Axe of the Unyielding drawn. Cernd and Jaheira began summoning elemental princes to their aid and causing mighty storms of acid, fire and lightning to rain down upon their enemies. Rangers began taking casualties and Imoen and Nalia backed out of them after taking light damage and having their spells disrupted.   
The animals, charmed for various sides, were attacking each other, and some ran at the rangers, who swung at them with melee weapons or charmed some more of them. After dowsing the last of the fire elementals, Minsc confronted their Prince, Zaamal Rul, and put him out as easily. Nalia summoned a demon at the toes of Sunnis, and the prince of earth engaged the hellish beast in a struggle to the death of them both.   
Running faster than all around him, Kan slashed through druids, making a beeline for Cernd. The archdruid summoned creeping doom at the monk in the forms of thousands of insects, arachnids and reptiles. The monk plowed into them, taking out hundreds at a time with fast and powerful swings of his legs, arms and blades, moving so fast he crushed or slashed through them at a touch. As Kan spun around, Cernd shapeshifted into a werewolf and leapt onto his back, biting at his throat. Kan simply fell back, trying to crush the wolf beneath him, but he scampered out from under him and leapt onto the monk, still going for his throat. With lightning reflects, Kan pushed his chin towards his chest just as the wolf's hungry jaws moved between them. He thus muzzled the canine, and while it clawed at his chest, struggling to break free, Kan ran the shape- and allegiance-shifting situational ethicist through with Truth and Clarity. He pushed the body off himself as it metamorphisized back into Cernd, and slid the lifeless archdruid off his katanas onto the muddy ground.   
Onyx, running through Jaheira's conjured cloud of insects, came upon her. He paused, not exactly wanting to slay her with his deadly armaments, and she took the chance to smite him with nature's beauty, blinding him for a moment. He heard her running away, and hacked apart a few animals he heard growling at leaping at him as his sight returned. He saw her disappear and followed.  
Jaheira leapt down into a gully out of sight of the battlefield. Onyx chased after her and leapt in himself, to find the druid evoking an entangling mass of vines in his way. Wearing a ring of free action, he leapt through them harmlessly and came face to face with her. Wishing to charm her rather than harm her, he sheathed the Axe of the Unyielding and drew out the Blade of Roses. He sheathed Blackrazor and whipped out the Flail of Ages, planning to slow her down with its magical effects and hoping the druid would mostly resist its elemental damage.   
"It doesn't have to be this way, Jaheira," Onyx coaxed as she drew out the speedy scimitars Belm and the Water's Edge. "No one has to get hurt," he continued as she infused her weapons with harming magic.   
"No, Onyx, it has come to this. I take no pleasure from this but a sacrifice must be made for the greater balance." Long used to and now ignoring his charismatic ways, she swung at him from both sides and he parried with his weapons. She continued to slash rapidly. Onyx tried to deflect her blows and gain a chance to slow her down with the flail, but she was faster and making more blows than he. Finally he consigned to bear a swipe from her on each side to gain the inside advantage, and his armor deflected her scimitars as he raked the flail heads across her stomach, doing slight elemental damage but not slowing her. Shielding Water's Edge with the Blade of Roses, he raked across her chest again as she gained a hit on his shoulder with Belm, but then she began to slow down. Now swinging at a more reasonable pace, he began incanting a hold person spell. He managed to get it off before she hit him again but she resisted it. She began chanting a spell of her own and a swarm of insects emerged from the gully walls and surrounded him, making his next attempt to cast infeasible. He made a stunning blow with the flail across her stomach and managed to stun her. As she stood there, still lucid but unable to move, he gently put his weapons away and tried to reason with her as the insects cleared.   
"Jaheira, please listen to me. Despite our differences, you have been my steadfast ally and my closest friend. I have never met a braver woman and surely would have never come this far without your powers and companionship. I truly regret not giving more time to you throughout our many adventures. I have promised myself to make it up to you as soon as I could push the world back from the brink of destruction, but that has not yet come to pass. This Cyran seeks far more than to be part of the natural cycle of life and death. He does not kill to gain the power to become a god, but rather wished to become a god only to kill. If he is not stopped, a new reign of murder and death will fall over Faerun. Not just upon the humanoid races, but over all life large and small, flora and fauna. I have seen the wake of destruction his army leaves. I have come with a monk - Kan - my son, of a long lost love in Candlekeep - and I tell you he would rule the throne with a fair and even hand. He is good and pure but no puritan, lawful and firm but no tyrant. Cyran seeks to unbalance the coin toss of my gamble, and Kan and Kan alone can counterbalance him. I would have you stand with me in this, as I have held you in esteem, companionship,...and love."  
Jaheira's muscles unfroze and she let her scimitars fall into the moss. "You speak true to me, as you always have and always would," she began, solemnly. "I see now how the scales weigh and oppose you no more. It was a grave error for the druids to stand in your way, but they have paid for it with their lives, and as always you have prevailed. You shall have my blessings for your quest which is so important to all life, and I know you and your son will emerge victorious. As he ascends to godhood I know you will have in store great things for your new unborn son, and your daughter to follow."   
Onyx gasped at her foresight - the sight of the only the most powerful druids in the history of Faerun - and she, smiling at his respect for her, continued.   
"I am glad to hear you tell how you bore such concern for me and regret of some things - your words of consolation throughout our quests, few though the were, lifted me always - and I sensed your feelings, but it means much to hear you finally say it. You and I, though we would always have our differences, could have mutually devoted ourselves together to vanquishing the most destructive and unbalanced of evils - the only quests worthy of such experienced and powerful adventurers. I understand the path - and the woman - you chose. You were true to your heart as you should have been, but now see, as I know you have wondered, what might have been."   
The druid gently put her hand to Onyx's cheek, delicate fingers splayed out, and led him down a road. Down a road she had been on many times and would many more, more times than all the other roads of time and mortal choice as well as the physical roads over the land that she would spend the rest of her life endlessly walking. Back to a fork in the road.   
Back to their emergence from the dungeon of Irenicus. After Imoen was tragically snatched away in the breaking dawn, and as the first sunlight and fresh air in weeks cast itself upon them, the nature-loving Jaheira seemed rejuvenated from her deathly pallor of loss and torture and was more alive and more beautiful than ever Onyx had seen her before. As their eyes caught, the mutual loss of their closest companions was briefly forgotten and it seemed as though they would find soulmates in each other.   
From here they took the path not traveled. The left the crumbling Waukeen's Promenade, the cages and bazaars and the huge circus tent loomed unimportant behind them, its illusions never to be trifled with. The party found their cleric in the upstanding young Anomen and they braved across Amn, through Spellhold, the Underdark, and Suldanesellar, and hell, their love blossoming as they sought Irenicus and revenge. As they bravely rid the world of the other, evil Bhaalspawn and the nefarious Melissan and rebalanced things, Onyx chose to pursue justice with a mortal life and a mortal wife. He and Jaheira would travel throughout Faerun, sometimes doing good together, and sometimes through different means and apart for months at a time. Always in love but in conflict, with each other in spirit always and body sometimes, not always together but never truly apart.   
So it was not to come to pass. Not in this universe, not in the path it took. Perhaps, far, far off, great leagues and eons away in the measurement of universes, in which the tiniest of increments is beyond the reckoning of a single universe, perhaps there will be another universe, made likely to be by the sheer numbers outweighing this tiniest of probabilities, which is like their own, save one divergence, save for a single mortal choice.   
But in this universe, they hugged and stoically let slip the tiniest of tears, and Jaheira picked up her weapons as she turned to walk away, to disappear in to the forest and pursue a new life. She would have many great adventures, traveling thrice back and forth across Faerun yet never returning to Tethyr or the Sword Coast, but no path she took would bring her within sight of Onyx ever again, and she saw this. Their eyes met one final time as she turned away to dash into the thick brush, resembling a look of newfound and yet unclaimed love they had once shared long ago, but veiled now by sadness and the new beginning of bittersweet memories. And then Jaheira was gone.   
As Onyx climbed back up out of the gully and onto the battlefield, his friends were slaying the last of the scattering druids and animals with arrows, bolts, and magic missiles. "Jaheira ran away. She is gone," said Onyx sadly. Nalia and Imoen, who had been witness to the party strife and occasional confidants for Aerie and Jaheira, sensed much of what had just transpired. Keldorn and Valygar nodded, knowing well what Onyx meant despite lacking extrasensory perception or many hours with the party.   
Even Minsc, and perhaps Boo, grasped the finality of this incident. In his own unappreciated understanding of things, he knew Jaheira would wander the earth for the rest of her days, a lonely and bitter sole. Minsc himself would in time leave their company, and though returning to Rasheman a hero of the Ice Dragon berserker lodge and starting his own adventuring company, would eventually himself wander out into the wilds and disappear.   
  
VII. Endgame  
  
The party continued riding to Mouth Ith without encountering further resistance. As they approached the base, Valygar held his hand up and led them into a tucked away cleft in the rocks.   
"Soon we will be within the sight of the evil diviners within. They will be see any magical auras which pass within. Nalia and Imoen, you must stay here with the horses or return to the Keep or Athkatla. On a personal note, I am glad to have you staying out of harm's way."   
Imoen regretting not being able to lend her thieving abilities to this last leg of the mission, but Nalia merely smiled. Sensing each other's opinions, they spoke together. "We would not dream of abandoning you as you brave the final chapter of our quest. We will watch your horses and await your victorious return."   
"Rangers, protect them and keep hidden from evil," Onyx instructed. "A small party, quickest and quietest, consisting of Valygar leading Keldorn, Minsc, myself and Kan, will go straight to Cyran and do what must be done." With that the five dismounted and ran towards Mouth Ith, Valygar leading the way to a small cave at its base.  
They descended into the dark, cold depths of the mountain. They wrinkled their noses as Valygar led them up an underground stream brimming with refuse from the barbaric Cyricist soldiers within. They eventually had to dive into the water as the ceiling crept lower, mercifully after the merging point of the refuse stream. Just as their breath was about to give out, they popped up into the kitchen of the slave chambers. Smashing the shackles of slaves open without breaking cadence as they ran by, the party soon met and easily dispatched the slavemaster and squad of guards at the door.   
"From here we will be constantly passing Cyricists," Valygar warned. "Our only chance is to keep up our speed and make our way forward faster than the news of our entrance, or the entire army will come down upon us."   
They ran up and down caverns and hallways, taking out wandering soldiers, clerics, and mages without losing speed. Enemies were increasing in frequency and number as the heroes approached the heart of Ith, but still they carried on. At last they came to an ornately decorated chamber with a number of mages lounging, meditating, and puffing on houkas. Blades flying, they quickly cut their way through them before any could get off a spell, but not before the last, rapidly bleeding to death as he lunged towards a wall, pressing his hand against a diamond eyeball and uttering a strange word with his dying breath. Immediately it glowed and turned to look at the warriors, and they could feel magic crackling through the air from it and from out of the room. They gasped in horror as it began spawning simalcra of Cyran himself, brandishing Lies and Madness and babbling magic.   
Keldorn dispelled all those around him with his true sight as they gulped potions of speed and Valygar led them with new haste out the back of the room and down a carefully chiseled hallway, obviously leading to the center of the mountain. At last they came to a chamber with circular doorways. One was filled by a much larger diamond eye, spewing out Cyran phantasms as fast as they could run towards the party.   
"Behind that eye is Cyran's inner sanctum and the only passage to him!" Valygar shouted as he drew his elven court bow and began a futile attempt to shatter the eye with enchanted arrows. Minsc followed suit, Onyx hurled Hangard's Axe at it over and over, and Kan tried to shatter it with telekinetic fists, while Keldorn continued to see through and dispel the false enemies.   
"Is there no end in sight to this many-faced evildoer? Minsc would kick his butt over and over, only to find him there again!!!" the Rasheman ranger exclaimed exasperatedly. "Only Boo could crawl around this giant eye, but surely even the bravest hamster in the land could not take Cyran without our help!!!"   
At last Keldorn said solemnly, "I see clearly now what must be done." He stared directly at the eye itself, looking deep into its horrid gaze. It began to jitter the scrape the doorway as the noble inquisitor stared it down, but Keldorn's mind was being pierced with every evil thought Cyran had ever had. At last the great eye shattered into sandlike crystals, but as it did, Keldorn's brain exploded and he clasped his hands over his eyes, screaming tragically as they popped out into his palms. The great paladin collapsed to the floor, lifeless.   
"Never a truer inquisitor has seen Faerun," Onyx eulogized. "Let us look to his example, and his death not be in vain as he shows us and those who come after the vision of clarity and truth." As a foreboding inkling of foresight passed over his mind, Onyx reached down and plucked the eyes from the hands of his fallen fellow paladin. Speaking through the voice of another, one who remained close to him in spirit and saw with her own gifted sight of things to come, Onyx placed them in Kan's hands, and curling the son's fingers over them, and intoned "when he who counterbalances you seems invincible, use these to gaze through his seamless shield and see him for the vulnerable mortal he yet is." With that, the four ran over the diamond dust and down the circular hallway, seeking justice and Keldorn's hallowed redemption.   
The force of four could hear Cyran's maniacal laughter echoing down the hall just ahead of them. They rushed down the corridor, Kan dodging the exploding skull traps Cyran was leaving in their way and the others raising shields above their heads to block the shards of bone. Eventually they came to a large chamber just as they spied Cyran dashing through the doorway at the other end. They ran after him, but suddenly a very large humanoid figure appeared in the doorway. Two electric-white eyes glowed on the shadow and it stepped toward into the light, a huge armored man with a triangular tattoo on his forehead.   
"Hello, brother!" boomed Sarevok. "I never did properly thank you for restoring me. You should have joined me when you had the chance. I offered to help you ascend to the throne, but you chose to throw it away. But now, I have found one truly worthy of it! He will need a right hand warrior in the pantheon of gods! And now for my end of the bargain." He drew Soul Reaver.  
Only one? Onyx thought. I alone could take him - I have twice before, on earth and hell.   
"Wait for me, mighty lover!" cackled a familiar drow voice. Viconia stepped from the shadows. "At last we have found a god who shall help Shar topple that bloated bug Lolth and avenge me for my exile from the drow!" She kneaded and scratched Sarevok's scalp, drew blood and daintily licked it off her fingers. "Face the wrath of unholy evil!"  
Onyx rolled his eyes. This'll be - what - my hundred-and-first drow priestess killed? Very well.   
"My dear lady," began a sly voice. "Both of us have been cast from Onyx's so charming company not once but twice. He bade me away walk - and fly away. Now I shall be the one to bid him farewell. Consider it something a little bird told you." The once halfling and then sparrow Montaron, polymorphed back into a humanoid again, dropped from the shadows overhead, as flaming and electric short swords emerged from their sheaths.   
Well, I really should have killed him back in Nashkel, I suppose, Onyx thought. At least I'll get better treasure from his carcass this way.   
"Greetings, my raven, tis been much too long! I word with ye I be cravin', now listen all to my song."   
An extraplanar residue gave off a sheen as a familiar tiefling cavorted onto the scene.   
"Listen now all to the tale of Onyx and his love. Rescue he did, his party and this dove.   
A golden bird of magic, tis true, my tale. Her name was little Aerie, the beautiful avariel.   
This Blade would gladly have given Onyx his swords, and much help I'd've been, but he had other words.   
He bid me back to my old haunts and the stage, he did it for envy, coveting and rage.   
Aerie would have rather fancied me, you see, and jealous oaf Onyx, for she, thus banished me.   
But now I am back to serve a chaotic end; as death is art, the evil god must win!   
And once I have helped him to the throne, he'll tap Aerie's mind and she shall be my own!   
And so now let me catch my breath, as I must finish the Ballad's of Onyx's Death!"   
Haer'Dalis cartwheeled towards the cavalier, his short swords Entropy and Chaos spinning near.   
Sarevok charged forwards, Soul Reaver raised high, and Minsc drew his vorpal halberd Ravager and the two musclebound warriors clambered at each other. Montaron began hopping from wall to wall and Valygar, hasting himself, vaulted off a wall with his strong legs, drawing Hindo's Doom and Celestial Fury and clashing against the fighter-thief's sword shorts in midair. Viconia held back, uttering blasphemous incantations and Kan's form blurred as he bent time in a mad dash towards the evil priestess. Onyx raised Blackrazor and the Axe of the Unyielding and raced towards the mad Blade.   
Metal clashed against metal as Minsc and Sarevok's weapons met and they crashed into each other, armor clanging. Pushing against each other, the mighty warriors tried to push over one another and gain room to strike. Blades locked, Valygar and Montaron fell to the floor and each struggled to hop up first and gain the initiative to slash or kick the other. Columns of fire and drops of acid rained down at the back of the chamber and a quickened Kan deftly rolled and cartwheeled through the torrent, dodging them all as Viconia began gating in a demon and surrounding herself with a globe of blades. Haer'Dalis began a furious spinning dance as Onyx crashed his weapons into the spinning swords, striking with all his might but unable to unplant the tiefling's feet.   
Sarevok gained the momentum and pushed Minsc off, managing to graze him with Soul Reaver, draining his ability to hit back as the ranger struggled to counter with a hit of his own. Valygar slashed fiercely down at the grinning halfling, who fell aside and disappeared against the wall in the shadows. Kan came out of a roll into the face of the demon, who clawed and bit at him as the monk began chanting and thrusting his outstretched, quivering foot towards the demon's heart as Viconia cast pure destruction at him. Haer'Dalis came out of his spin and Onyx swung and stabbed at him, only to have the tiefling tuck and roll between his legs and slice at his thighs and groin along the way, only to graze his armor and pop out behind the paladin.   
Minsc parried most of Sarevok's strong blows, but could not connect as Soul Reaver continued to sap away his aim. Valygar melded into the shadows as well, and slashing sounds echoed from the chamber's dark corners as the stealthy warriors each struggled to backstab the other first. Kan kicked the life out of the demon with a single blow and leapt off his other leg over its fresh carcass, resisting Viconia's death magic and, slowing time further, fell amongst her whirling blades as he expertly twisted and contorted to dodge them as the drow witch infused her mace with the power to slay the living and swung it towards him. Onyx turned to face his dancing enemy, who began an aggressive spin that hacked towards the back of the paladin.   
Sarevok knocked Minsc's halberd head aside with a powerful blow, and raised his sword above his head for the killing strike as the ranger struggled to keep his grip and his life. Valygar groaned as Montaron's sword sent bolts of lightning into his back and struggled to reach the wily halfling behind him. Kan managed to twist and curve himself just around Viconia's falling mace, but ran out of maneuvering room and the blades filling the air began to nick and cut him all over his arms, legs, and torso as he searched for a chance of his own to strike. Chaos and Entropy sliced into Onyx's back and side and he winced as he tried to turn and make a swing at the demonic tiefling.   
As Sarevok's sword was falling down upon him, Minsc drew upon his hidden strength and managed to swing Ravager around at the evil fighter's belt. Valygar crossed his arms over his face and his katanas glided backwards over his shoulders, spearing towards Montaron as the rogue began to drive his fiery sword into the stalker's back. Taking more blades through his flesh, Kan found a chance to strike and his palm pressed towards Viconia's solar plexus, quivering. Onyx drew upon his holy might as he turned to face his enemy, Blackrazor pointing towards the bard's chest and deflected his short swords as the cavalier's vorpal axe swung towards his neck.   
Minsc beat the risen wraith to a critical strike, cleaving clean through his waist with a vorpal slice. Valygar's katanas pierced with fury into Montaron's collar on either side of his neck and he lifted the impaled thief over his head and slung him against the wall. Gritting his teeth and unable to avoid the blades, Kan's palm connected flatly with the center of Viconia's chest and her eyes opened wide as her soul was instantly struck from her body. Onyx managed to plunge Blackrazor into Haer'Dalis's heart, and absorbing his energy, swung the unyielding axe into his neck with increased strength, decapitating him with with a smooth vorpal strike.   
Sarevok's upper body dropped Soul Reaver and fell to the floor, his glowing eyes growing dark. A sliced up Montaron smashed into the wall and fell crumpled to the floor, dying in moments. Viconia's uninjured body fell gently back onto the floor, beautiful and at last peaceful in death. Haer'Dalis's headless body flew aside, doing one last cartwheel and a final bow as his head rolled away and his brief candle went out.   
The four heroes, all injured but none critically, dashed down the back hallway as they gulped healing potions and regained sapped strength. They ran deep into the mountain, for minutes on end, and at last came to a natural cavern deep in its bowels. It was a small underground lake with a high ceiling and a small island, a rock really, in the middle. On it stood a stone gate, leading nowhere. And Cyran by it. As he completed an incantation, a black and purple shimmering surface stretched across it.   
"You fools!" he cackled in an inhumanly loud voice. The voice seemed to come straight from his mind into theirs. "The coin is falling in its final spins. Tymora and Beshaba tossed it as Onyx, the last of the Bhaalspawn, ceded the throne, and only I am worthy to guide its fall. For the almighty Cyric has been forbade from snatching the coin for himself, but not I. As your father Bhaal walked the earth and sowed his seed as he died, Onyx, so Cyric did as he was born into godhood. And thus was I born into manhood. I, Cyran, son of Cyric, shall now hold the portfolio of Bhaal and use it as my father could not. Together, father and son in the pantheon, we will begin a new lineage which will seize all evil powers from the unworthy, weak gods. I go now to claim my destiny, to control, as the weak do not, the flip of my coin!!" With that he sprang through the portal.   
Onyx knew what had to be done. "Only Kan may go on from here," he stated. The monk began crouching, preparing to make a straight leap over the water and into the portal. "And now we must part as men. Whatever the outcome of this battle, you will never again walk this plane as a mortal. I know your pure heart and honed body will serve you well in combat and godhood. As with me and my father, we shall never have known each other well, but as a father I will be proud to see you take the throne I ceded, vindicating me and bringing a new era of good to the Realms. Goodbye, my son," he finished, as his son completed his arc and vanished into the portal. Onyx and his ranger friends huddled on each other's shoulders and waited.   
Kan was falling through a black abyss. He sensed and then heard the madness of Cyran, falling along with him, gaining on a giant, spinning coin. Good and evil flickered past as it went end over end, the two surfaces bearing the insignias of each god that might be. Cyran reached the coin and began to push from the vile side, trying to flip it on top, but Kan reached the pure side a moment later and pushed against him. The two moved to the top edge of the coin to gain leverage, both pushing with all their might but unable to push one side on top. Kan could hear Tymora coaxing him on to victory and Cyran could hear Beshaba cursing him for coming so close to failure. At last the coin ricocheted off an invisible floor and shot into the air again. The kensai-mage and the monk struggled to use the spin to their advantage, and the evil one managed to flip his side on top, only to have the good one quickly push against the opposite edge of his side and quickly flip it all the way over again. It bounced again and again, halving the height of its arc each time, and despite a few flips and twists, neither could manage to land it on other than its edge.   
At last it lost the momentum to bounce again, and slowly rolled along the unknown surface as the two ran along beside it, pushing equally and opposite. At last it came to a stop, still on edge, and slowly began to sink into the surface. As it disappeared, they darkness overhead lightened as bright and dark eyes each appeared in the sky overhead and the surface revealed itself to be hard-packed sand.   
"We commend you on your unparalleled performance and resolve, mortals," the harmonious call of Tymora and the dissonant rasp of Beshaba sang. "But the coin of fate has landed on its edge." White and black suns rose over opposite horizons as Tyr and Cyric looked on. "As such," the goddesses of luck and fate continued, "this matter must now be decided by mortals. In mortal combat!"  
Kan and Cyran were blasted back from one another but each flipped backwards and landed on his feet in a fighting stance. With amazing alacrity, Cyran quickly conjured dozens of energy discs and began to hurl them at Kan. Kan concentrated and, as they sliced through the air towards him, he slowed time and began dodging them one after the other. Leaning, twisting, jumping, and ducking, he gracefully avoided each one by inches. As the last one whizzed path, he came out of his contortions. Kan began to dash at his enemy and stretch time effortlessly, but Cyran stopped it outright. He began calling terrible evocations down around his opponent. Comets and meteors and the breath of a dragon appeared frozen in midair, ready to storm down, and he prepared the air to resume with a horrid wilting. Next he gated in a quartet of demons between them, and time-stopped mind dominations and killing magics appeared in front of his fingertips, aimed towards the monk.   
As time resumed, he surrounded himself with a carnival of illusions, mirror images and color prisms and simalcra. Kan, slowing Cyran and his many magical creations to a crawl, began leaping, rolling, spinning, and carting through and around the meteors, comets, and dragonfire blasts. As Kan passed through the storm of evocations, Cyran's geometrically multiplying simalcra began leaping through the magical obstacle course towards him. As Kan continued to dodge the devasting energy, the wilting in the air could not be spatially avoided, but Kan's magical resistance spared him from its horrid effects. As he made it out of the blizzard of energy, Kan approached the four demons, who were clawing at each other furiously but now decided to hunger after manflesh.   
Kan cleverly leapt straight in amongst them as the simalcra neared, causing the fiends to turn around. As the monk continued to twist and curl around the false Cyrans' illusionary katana blades and magical bursts, the demons rushed after him but soon came to the simalcra and began tearing them apart. The demons were hacked and blasted to bits as they roared in dying rage as the uncorporeal meat vanished in their maws. As Kan's mighty body resisted all of Cyran's necromancing spells and his keen mind saw through the enchanting and illusionary ones, he began a final dash towards the lone warrior-wizard As Kan made his final sprint at him, Cyran suddenly glowed bright white as an all-powerful abjuration sphere materialized around him.   
Cyran had spent several years of magical research perfecting this spell. An alamgamation of absolute immunity, protection from energy, spell shield, spell trap, protection from magical and normal weapons and missiles, it rendered him immune from all weapons, spells, and elemental damage that he had ever tested it against. Now, weak from unleashing its awesome power, he kneeled and caught his breath, knowing time was now on his side.   
Katanas and feet blazing, Kan crashed into its surface and was immediately bounced back by the force of his own blows. He continued to attack, but his weapons, fists, feet, and telekinetics all failed to scratch it. Cyran regained his strength and charged Kan, beating him back and knocking him to the ground with the force of his blows and the repulsed blows of his harmless enemy. As Cyran prepared to drive Lies and Madness into him, the monk rolled back and to his feet, and as the psychotic one stabbed the sand, the noble one drew from his robe the eyes of Keldorn.   
Cyran looked up and channeled dread energy through his katanas, prepared to blow his enemy into oblivion, but as he did Kan threw the eyes straight at him. The first, touching the sphere, vaporized along with it, and the second, shattering the purple gem in Cyran's headband and absorbing into his forehead, erased his memorized spells from his mind and rendered him magicless. Cyran screamed like a tortured animal as good and noble thoughts passed through his mind for the first and last time. He was driven back, but raising his katanas again, knew he had been reduced to merely the greatest kensai in history.   
Kan raised his katanas as well. The two circled each other, and then, stepping off each foot powerfully, leapt high into the air at each other, lunging over forward with weapons straight towards one another and feet flying out behind them. As they clashed in midair, blades sliding along each other and locking at the hilts, they crashed shoulders and spun as a single rigid mass around each other through the air, katanas and legs sticking out in all directions. They began to descend and each came to a kneel as they touched the sand, still locking weapons and face to face.   
"You've got no magic left, wizard," stated Kan.  
"Perhaps, but as pure as your mind is, so mine is warped," hissed Cyran.   
With that, they leapt apart, but as they flew backwards through the air and Kan began to stretch time in an attempt to slow his opponent, Cyran's mind began distorting it as well. Unlike Kan, whose clear thoughts could bend space and time along clean, straight lines, Cyran's twisted thoughts bent them into strange curves and sharp angles. Seeming to disappear and reappear as if moving through a chamber of mirrors, Cyran flashed around his enemy, who tried to follow a straight path towards him but could not find him. As Cyran rapidly snuck up behind Kan through this all-consuming maze, Kan began to understand its foreign geometry, and, finding the ability to see the evildoer by bending light around the many twists and turns, at the proper moment snapped around to meet his opponent, slashing into Cyran who had opened himself up to strike.   
As Cyran lost his concentration and space began to snap back into its proper shape, the two clashed weapons and began a furious dance of blows and thrusts around and past each other. Each speeding up in time but unable to gain a significant lead over his adversary, they fought at blinding speed, slashing, spearing, parrying, dodging, flipping, cartwheeling, and rolling. As Cyran slashed in from each side with the strength to cut his enemy clean in half, Kan reversed his grip on each weapon and circled his katanas outward, blades sticking out the bottoms of his fists to each side of him like wings. He parried Cyran's incoming slashes with them as he began to punch him on the chest and face with the katana handles in gripping fists. The kensai swung his katanas up and down, unable to bring them in and regain inside control as the monk pummeled him with blinding speed.   
At last, in desperation, he swung his shoulders around and crossed his arms began his head, sticking his katana blades forward again over his shoulders and encircling both his neck and Kan's. Lies and Madness curved inwards, touching just behind Kan's head. He could behead me in an instant, Kan realized, but would he not behead himself as well?   
"From here, there can be only one outcome." Cyran stated, staring deep into Kan's eyes with a cruel sneer distorting half of his face "You will die before I, and then it will end, for I will be the one to ascend."   
Kan calmly closed his eyes and chanted as his head began to quiver, and as Cyran began scissoring his blades into their necks, with focused strength Kan headbutted him, smashing his already distorted face and pushing his Cyran's head back into his own crossed arms, causing his katanas to slide open just enough to pass by Kan's neck leaving deep but nonfatal incisions. As Kan felt the lies and madness creep through him but dissipate in his pure and noble blood, he thrust out with Truth and slashed across with Clarity. Cyran desperately tried to bring his arms in front of him to parry the attacks, and each focused hard trying to speed time up for himself more than the other could. At last, Cyran's rammed and reeling head got lost in one of its own deceptive twists, and Kan's flew forward unerringly. As the monk sped past his enemy, his katanas met evil. Truth plunged straight through the liar's heart and Clarity took off the madman's head.   
Kan took a deep breath and slung his katanas past himself, flinging off the tainted blood. As he resheathed them he saw Cyran's gear and flesh began to writhe and then disintegrate into tiny particles which joined the sand. His skeleton, the skull's forehead bearing the black sun of Cyric, began to sink into the endless desert along with Lies and Madness. The black sun on the horizon let out an enraged scream from Cyric himself and fell below the horizon, and the bright one rose towards Mysta'a eyes at the sky's apex.   
"You have overcome all, great Kan, pursuing the pure and noble path," Tymora sang warmly as Beshaba's voice screamed and her eyes faded from the sky. "Now, good monk, take the path you have carved for yourself. Do you ascend the throne?"   
"For the sake of all that is ordered and good, I do," spoke Kan, folding his hands together in prayer. His unparalleled mortal body began to fade and he was born again a god, to ascend to the pantheon and sit in his throne, the throne vacated by his grandfather Bhaal and ceded by his father Onyx. A new reign was begun, a reign devoted to the justness of the murder of evil, the reign of Kan. 


End file.
